I quite like that. Different colour would be nice, but I'm not really fussed about aesthetics if an instrument plays well.
I'd probably bin the Ibby preamp as well and put something else in.
Headless on shorties makes so much sense - the string clamp means that just about any string can be used - on the older slant fret one I had I got TI flats to work properly with it without them coming unwound. Care is needed, but it's do-able!