My personal experience has been that changing from a points to electronic distributor will not give you much if any seat-of-the-pants performance improvement.
I have two mildly modified 400s and run a stock GM HEI distributor in both. These distributors are relatively cheap, available anywhere and mine have been trouble free for several years. When I made the change-over there was no noticeable/measureable improvement in performance. On my P-Dude built 455 [that is more modified than the 400s]he installed a stock GM HEI distributor and I recently added an MSD 6AL box to help out at lower RPMs.
I'm not saying that the MSD distributors aren't the way to go, they probably are better built than the stock GM HEIs. I just don't know that you will see a lot of performance improvement either way. All that being said, electronic distributors are the way to go, much more dependable and reliable. And at least in my case, I'm so darned short that it was a real hassle to reach the distributor to change points !!
Good luck in your project.
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