Currently riding a Uma Landsled 8.5 with 14.25 wb. Seem to be getting ghost pop more often. Was thinking of trying the GO96 shape. Would the shorter wb help with my ghost pop issue?
Maybe not so much the wheelbase as it is more the most important bit between the back bolts, the amount of flat and then the angle of the kick.
In particular, the fingers of flat being shorter and a steeper kick will always give anyone ghost pop if you are not quite so used to that combination, on any truck, but especially on longer wheelbase trucks like Thunder and Venture, although I have had it just as much on my usual Indy trucks with a board that was just too steep and wasn't what I was used to.
Changing the board to something more mellow can definitely help, but not necessarily shorter wheelbase. Compare your old board to the new one, if at all possible, or at the very least check the angle of the kicks on the new one to see if it is steeper than the previous boards you have had.
The other thing to check is if you get down lower, you can adapt to the different kicks more easily, but it is changing how you skated the old board, compared to how you skate this one - muscle memory or whatever people like to call it, as well as just taking longer to adapt to it.
For me though, having a board with a lot of ghost pop usually means I am going to be less than happy with that board, so I take it off and pass it on to someone else fairly quickly and get something that works better for me, but I can afford to do that more easily than some others.