First off, as already commented, stop bothering him. Too much stress and and messing with him could make things a lot worse, leave him be for a while. From the pictures he looks like he is going into the shedding process. Keep an eye out for other signs he could be shedding. The scale looks okay to me - my snakes will sometimes have a weird random scale here and there.
My thoughts are that your humidity could be too high, too much moisture can cause irritation and I've seen it in the past with my snakes. If he is sitting on wet substrate all the time there is a risk of scale rot developing. I try to keep my humidity right around 60%, only bumping it up higher for shedding and females sitting on eggs. I use cypress mulch and it retains moisture well and I usually don't have big fluctuations in humidity and I don't have to spray all the time.
Belly heat is better for ball pythons and I would say use the UTH over the emitter. Check your hot spot. Is your heating hooked up to a thermostat? Can you accurately tell the temperature of the hot spot? A temp gun is a great tool to have if you don't already. Keep a hotspot of 88-90F and the enclosure should also be large enough for him to move between temperature gradients.
As far as hissing goes - my snakes do it all the time, at random and thats just fine. I have one female in particular that is always a chatter box. If he's not wheezing or drooling or having difficulty breathing, I wouldn't worry.
Keep us posted on his condition.
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