Replacing like with (more expensive) like, is probably not going to make much difference, as mentioned above..
I'd tend to mod if it's result is something you can't really get off the shelf or at a realistic price, again like the headless thing I did, you could not go out and buy that (in the unlikely event you wanted toπ) plus the donor and parts were v. cheap in the scheme of things.
Lots of folk put basses together out of parts they've got plus a few bits off ebay (or here) tho arguably do those actually count as Mods?