1. DO NOT buy a stage one kit.
2. It is not necessary to buy ANY kind of jet kit to run your HMF pipes. You would have to mess with the A/F screws and possibly shims at the least tho to get it running good. You would probably run even better by dropping your main jets a size or so. Probably not 100% necessary but may give ya a little more juice.
3. If you do decide to do a jet kit, a stg7 or morley's are the only real options. Sean's kit retains the airbox but he sends you a modified lid with integrated K&N filter. You throw out your old paper one. Stg7 requires removing the airbox entirely and going with pod filters. Both kits help give you some more power up top. Sean's kit will retain most of your power down low while the stg7 kit seems to kill a bit of power down low.
4. I was leary or doing my own carb work too. But with the help of this forum it is definitely doable. I would say do it yourself. It will help you learn a TON of stuff and then you will have more confidence when you start doing your fine tuning and actully have an idea of whats going on. Even if you send your carbs out to someone to rebuild, chance are VERY high that you will be doing the fine tuning yourself once they are on the bike.
5. The ultrasonic cleaners are definitely the shit but some good ole hard work and carb dip (I have no idea how good soda blasting works) should do the trick unless your carbs are really jacked up.
6. As far as the carb parts go, did you notice how Mark says to replace items in RED only if necessary. Coasting enrichers, Main jet screw, Main jet plug, and diaphragms only get replaced if they are bad. I would think the float drain screw would fall into that category as well but it is not RED. Most everything else is O-rings and gaskets. If you have old carbs and you're going in, give yourself the peace of mind and replace all O-rings and gaskets. There may be other parts that need replaced too but I wouldn't buy them until after a teardown and inspection. I would buy new diaphragm and float bowl screws (SS Hex) while you're there. Make sure you buy genuine Mikuni parts as already mentioned.
7. I didn't see the need for many "special" tools to work on the carbs. I had issues removing some screws so I needed an impact screwdriver and I broke out a dremel to put a slot in a couple screws but other than that, it was all pretty straight forward stuff. Setting the float levels takes some patience. You should have a caliper of some kind be it digital or vernier. Don't forget to check the float's wet height as well.
