Thanks for the suggestions everyone. Sorry I haven't replied, been a busy weekend. I think I'm going to use the normal Edelbrock heads for now, no porting. I've got a 8 1/4 with 3.21 gears in the back with a 3 speed manual on the floor. Going to be switching those out after the engine swap as money permits, though, to an 8 3/4 and an A833 OD. I do plan on tuning it all myself. Don't have much experience with carb tuning, but I'm looking forward to learning. That's part of why I started looking into edelbrock and street demon carbs, because that style seemed more interesting to me compared to the holley style. Also, the idea of having vacuum secondaries seemed like it could be more streetable, but I guess I'd be able to tune a holley double pumper to be the same? Part of what made me start looking into different carb options again was reading about how thermoquads worked. Kind of made me feel like that style of carb belongs on there.
edit: one other thing, bad fuel economy isn't a deal breaker, but I'd definitely prefer a higher mpg if possible as I plan to drive it a lot. So, if one carb is going to give me equal cruising power and much better fuel economy at the cost of a little bit of top end power, I'd prefer that for sure.