Teac DV-50 or modding Sony SCD 777 ES

Have my Sony since new for about 2 years, have been satisfied with the sound though wanting to replace it with a better SACD/CD player that is front loading to simplify my setup. Heard a lot of good reviews on Teac, so picked up a Teac recently to compare.

Overall, CD playback is better on Teac from top to bottom especially with the upsample engaged. SACD is closer, but Teac is smoother overall. However, I am wasting half of my Teac since I don't play DVD-A or DVD-V on my 2-ch system and I have no intention to integrate my 2-ch with HT in the future. Even though Teac has a feature to turn off video section, but I am paying for features I will probably never use.

Will my money be better spend on modding my Sony? I don't want to spend any more than $1k to mod it. Or should I instead buy a dedicate CD/SACD players like Marantz or Accuphase? Not a big fan of Musical Fidelity because of the style.