Just wanted to post an update - while its only been 4 days since I got the new modem so far I have not had any more lockups/dropouts even pushing 200GB per day transfer (I've been trying to run frequent speed tests, several pings, plus normal traffic). Also while I have some channels with "corrected" frames on the modem its only 10 or so at most and 0 uncorrectable (down from many thousands)
On pfSense Status > Monitoring reports only 0.21% maximum packet loss and 0% average and my ping has stayed below 50mS even under load and immediately returns to <10mS when load lets up.
The dmesg output shows no unexpected messages, no flapping, no "watchdog" errors and no "llinfo" errors. It seems stable once again. Hopefully I didn't just jinx it.
EDIT: 7 days now going strong.