Hopefully a Brett or a Ted will weigh in here. As far as I've seen, while the top guys use tapered elevators, they also use sealed hinge lines which should keep the elevator responsive to even the smallest control inputs.
I just try to follow the tip of the development tree rather than chasing down all of the old branches. My understanding is that the whole "slop in the elevator" thing was fixing problems that are better fixed with the "modern numbers" that came in sometime in the late 1980's along with bigger engines that could be regulated more reliably. (I.e., a bigger tail, a longer tail moment arm, coupled with an engine that didn't demand that you gyrate your way through the pattern to keep line tension). With those changes, you can trim the airplane out to the point where it just flies right.