Yeah- shade that puppy. It throws a HUGE image circle, so you've got an awful lot of image-forming light being tossed around inside the camera that's not going on the film.
One thought about scratching. I noticed recently with some of that cheapo film from China, the notch code area has a little "burr" on it from when they were stamped out. This little edge scrapes across the film surface when shuffling in a tray and caused horrible scratches. This film also has a really soft emulsion which didn't help.
Many "pro-shades" are 6" on a side. You might have to be a little ingenious and get a Sinar shade and adapt it to fit on your camera (in reality, a Sinar shade is just a spare bellows). Or make your own. A simple non-tapered square bellows of maybe 8" length when fully extended is not hard to make.