Running poorly, carb rebuild and desmog results (long post)

I bought my stock 97 Tourer March 2008, with 14K on the odometer. As far as engine work, other than changing oil all I had done to her was a set of plugs, and a K&N air filter. I did cut the piggies and drilled out the baffles last year. I have since put 20K on her, but earlier this summer I began to feel a miss on occasion, which eventually became much more regular. RPMs over 3000 seemed to be okay, but the low end just wasn't right, and I wasn'y feeling too confident about her. After reading numerous posts here I chose the Seafoam route first.
Seafoam helped some, but not enough to give me a warm fuzzy feeling, so a couple of weekends ago when everyone else headed east to ride The Dragon, I was sitting home with a bag of parts from redeye, rebuilding 6 carbs and desmoging my California model. I did a total desmog, using 14mm freeze plugs and JB Weld on top (covered nicely by the Kurys), and self made plates for the bottom. It is amazing how much crap came off the bike and space opened up.
When I finally got the carbs broken down I found the #4 carb's pilot screw spring and washer were black, and brittle. I looked as if a backfire or something had burnt back into the cavity and it took some delicate work to get it clean. Needless to say, I had to replace both parts, and was fortunate to find a spring from a junked carb bank off an old CB650 I had laying around, and a tech at the local stealership found a washer hiding in one of his junk drawers. I decided to replace the slows with 38's instead of cleaning them (recommended here often), and set the pilots at 1 3/4 out to start. Redeye's carb kit was just the ticket and everything went back together nicely.
While I had her torn down this far I decided to go ahead and rebuild the petcock and replaced the in-tank screen (probably should have replaced it with a Pingel but went the cheaper route), and replaced the fuel line with redeye's version w/filter, so that the entire fuel system was essentially new.
Got her all back together and she fired up just as soon as the fuel hit the carbs. I rode her long enough to get it good and warm before syncing the carbs, and when I got back on her after syncing, damn! The girl's got a whole new attitude! I just thought I knew what the Valk was capable of, but this is ridiculous. I still don't know how to wipe the grin off. There is still a very minor vibe or something from 2-3K that I think should go away when I do the final pilot screw adjustment, but for all intents and purposes it already runs better that it ever has, and would probably be fine enough as it is.
Looking back now, I'm sorry that I waited so long to do this, especially after seeing the condition of the original seals and o-rings. There was lots of schmeck (a real word according to the wfe) on the o-rings and in the carbs in general that was obviously causing air leaks and fuel blockages. The fact that the bike still continued to perform well enough to blow the chrome off my HD compadres says alot for Mr. Honda's engineering department.
I bet there are a bunch of bikes out there like mine was. If you've been contemplating doing the same, just make sure you slow down and take your time to do it right the first time. I believe the 38 slow jet was an excellent idea, and I can feel the difference easily in low end response, although that just may be a clean set of carbs themselves. I noticed absolutely no ill efects form the desmog, and feel that removing all the potential vaccum leaks was well worth the additional work. Considering the amount of time I put into this, there is no doubt that I've saved a couple grand from what it would have cost at the stealer, and I know my girl so much better now. I hope this helps someone else with similar issues.
Keep it straight in the wind.......