Because most of these people have 2.0 heads and if they want to go with STI heads, they need to purchase the castings, have them built, and also purchase all the AVCS hardware to go with them. It ends up being MUCH more expensive.

Sure, we haven't had a customer who has switched nothing but the heads yet... for obvious reasons. This is the same reason you almost never see back to back cam comparisons. We do actually have one in the shop right now, however, so I'll post those results once this build is broken in and tuned.

The custom piston route is nothing new and most tuners have had plenty of experience with them. While they run a bit better than thicker head gaskets, they do still leave a lot to be desired in terms of consistency under hard use. There are also shops who "de-shroud" the combustion chamber edges by hand. This helps a lot as it gets rid of the sharp edges that contribute to knock. We decided to do things a bit more precisely using a CNC machine. This helps us keep each set of heads and each combustion chamber nearly identical, which of course helps keep the results and performance consistent as well. This is not a new idea, just a different way of executing it. FWIW, Tomei seems to have a similar approach.

I do agree with you that the tech section would be more appropriate for this question. But I find it funny that you only decided to state this after I explained our approach specifically. Its also funny to hear this from someone who just last week posted a review of their favorite shop in the BAIC section instead of the designated review section. Lets try to keep things a bit less biased when someone asks an honest question.

Thanks
-- Ed