I'm no fan of the Dean Pace either. I don't consider it a true electric upright, it's more like an upright bass guitar. The fingerboard radius is very flat, so it's impossible to play arco on it. The Stagg does offer the full playability of a true upright, and indeed sounds very convincing and looks good. A guy I know has one and is very happy with it. I've heard some recordings of his, and it sounded very nice.
I don't think reversing the strings should be a problem. The controls will be on the wrong side, but they won't likely get in your way, and changing out the nut and bridge seems like a piece of cake too. On a real upright, the fingerboard is often radiused asymmetrically. I'm not sure if that's the case with the Stagg too, but I doubt it. Worth checking out!
I used to have this Big Kydd, which was converted to lefty by Dutch luthier Ellio Martina (who also built my Forza 5-string) - but these pics were taken before conversion:
It's a 35" solid flamed maple headless with ABM Mueller tailpiece, a simple wooden bridge with Fishman BP100 pickups, and a stringclamp on the end of the neck which enables you to use any kind of strings. I had to have the bridge reversed, the bridge angle changed, and the stringclamp on the 'headstock' had to be removed, the screwholes plugged and redrilled to place the clamp in a new angle, and the slots of the D and G string had to be widened to accommodate the heavier string gauge of the E and A string. I also had side dots inlaid. Very nice instrument, sounded very good for regular pizzicato playing and accommodated arco as well, but this didn't sound very convincing to my ear. Used it live on a couple of occassions, but used it too little to justify keeping it and I usually prefer playing an entire gig on the same bass.
