Axis Sport questions – changing pickups, height adjustmend…and…pickguard colour!

I am excited to have just managed to buy an Axis Sport after looking around for a long time for one in good shape. It’s still in the mail, so no pics, but its an HSS model with blue translucent finish on ash with rosewood board and black pickguard.

First, an opinion question:

I don’t like the black guard and am going to change it. I’m thinking white or parchment but have seen a few nice guitars with tortoise. What do you guys like?

Second, some technical questions for people who know about these guitars:

1) If I don’t like the stock singles and I want to replace (likely Lollar or Suhr), will I need to do any profile routing to get them to fit? I’ve heard this was an issue with Lukes.

2) I don’t like to direct mount replacement pickups because it “screws up” the pickup mounting holes. When I tried to find something liked for my axis I ruined a bunch of them before I found what I wanted. So has anyone tried drilling holes in the guard to mount them the usual way? I’m not sure if it’s possible without modifying the guitar body as well (ie. routing the pickup cavities for depth, etc) I saw Richie Castellano’s Red Special vid where he did this, but he also did a bunch of routing to accommodate 3 singles into an HH body.

3) Has anyone tried converting an SSH model into an SSS? Just wondering if additional routing is required to fit the bridge single at the usual angle. I’m not sure if I want to keep it SSH or go SSS and it’s really hard to find SSS models.

Thanks!