Glad to hear things were somewhat helpful and involved fewer brickbats than you were expecting. :)

Twenty does sound like an awful lot of people to get feedback from. I definitely second trying to get more in-depth feedback from a few of the more helpful (and articulate) people.

And yes, feedback on tone is hard to communicate without actually re-writing the story, because it's not a matter of changing a word here and there, but changing the flavour of the writing entirely.