1) You will probably end up paying more in total on the Armscor as more work might need to be performed to bring it up to spec
2) The Armscor (even after all smith work complete) will not have the value on the market that a similar Colt or SA will bring.
In short, if you're going to put $1500+ in mods you might as well start out with a top tier base gun.
For what it's worth I usually pick the smith and then contact them to see which frames/slides they prefer to work with and buy that.
I've found that for a ground up build you cant go wrong with Les Baer slides/frames.
Thanks, folks!