i've never shopped these pieces.The summit catalogue has a confusing selection
but individually the MSD distributors and control boxes price out around $250 +or - each
no?
It depends on which distributor you want. Their ready to run vacuum advance unit is about a hundred dollars more than your posted price. The Summit version of the same thing is about 250.
250-350 dollars is a LOT of money for JUST a distributor when you can upgrade a stock one with the HEI swap and a curve kit from FBO. Financially, it's a no brainer.
And talking about how the HEI breaks up at 7K RPM. That's hilarious. How many of us will really see those RPMs? If we're honest, probably not many at all. Besides, there are performance HEI modules available that will fire just fine beyond 7K if you just want the big bench racin bragging balls. That's about all they're worth to most people.