Old school engine rebuilding wisdom welcome here

[DeltaMustang65]

Ok. Call me crazy but I think it'd be sweet to be able to say I've got stock heads and still be fairly fast (fast enough to spank these ricers even harder, and those annoying monkeys in their stock 5.0s). I also kinda hope I can keep my block virgin, but yeah, I know sometimes you need to bore it over just to keep the cylinder nice and straight.

Let's say I get some new aluminum heads. I will paint them, of course, but since it's a common thing to do these days I doubt anyone that knows the first thing about cars will be fooled. I should still have them ported and polished, right? What about any other work, is it needed or would the performance gain be too small to justify the cost of labor? The only bad thing I've heard about aluminum heads is that they don't mate well with iron blocks. Or maybe it had something to do with the gasket too, I forgot. Has anyone heard of this issue?

Just a couple more things for now.

Does anyone happen to know the difference in output of the 289 with stock worked-up heads and the same 289 with aluminum heads out of the box or with the average port job? (This is of course assuming that the hypothetical 289s' other parts would be the same and also that they would be optimized for use with aluminum heads)That would go a long way in helping me decide what route I should go.

And...

Would stock worked-up heads be too much of a bottleneck to justify a roller cam? I'm assuming that they're pretty much the best option for aluminum heads here, but if I'm wrong, by all means let me know.

Thanks all.