I prefer organic pads on shimano flat bar brakes. My avid/sram variants squeal no matter what I do and have a worse feel to them. For road I like salmon kool stop pads, but shimano pads seem to do okay as well. I found doing forearm work made me strong enough to have better control on my old side pull single pivot brakes. Before as a teen I was just too weak to have good confidence with them.... even in the dry.