Ah, so that was probably the root cause of the shop issues - the 15mm outer bearing race was probably forced into a 14.7mm hole, making it impossible to install anything else without breaking it. And if the shop didn't order the hardware themselves they might just not have understood the compatibility issue.
I guess it can't hurt to try to see how your bike rides on the normal bushing / shock hardware, try to get your settings dialed back in now that you've had your service done on the fork and shock. That will at least get you to see if you're on the right track trying to get this bike to work for you.
Don't throw out the needle bearing hardware though, in case you decide it's still worth your trouble to try to get the bike going well with a different shock on the back end. I see way more complaints from CCDBA owners than I do from Monarch Plus RC3 owners - despite/because of the adjustability and design of the CCDBA maybe?
I can just tell you as far as "plushness" goes on the rear end of a gen 1 Bronson, you probably won't find a single person who has installed needle bearings to say it wasn't worth the trouble.
I got a some runs on my Bronson 1 CC this past weekend in Ashland Oregon, which has a mix of fast riding over chickenheads, some technical rock gardens, lots of smooth drifty quartzy decomposing-granite, lots of opportunities to jump, lots of flow and berms, lots of tight transitions, unfortunately a ton of braking bumps right now and about 5000' vert each lap ... the bike isn't the most ideal geometry for me, but when I was riding with good balance and in sync with the trail, I found myself saying "these wheels and this bike are really good." Light weight, stiff, lands jumps very well, can handle high speed chunder (but maybe not 1000 deep braking bumps). It's not the bike for everyone, but it's very light and for its weight, plush enough in its design if tuned well.
Good luck trying to dial in this bike or another one.