Aires or Black Box??

I personally will use both; however, I do not recomend that your first "upgrade" be with either of those two brands. Both can require some serious fitting and filling problems based on how well you prepare your kit parts. Try True Details for your first one or two, just to get used to using resin and super glue. A good first cockpit would be a P-51D in a Tamiya kit. 1\48 of course. This is a really straight forward upgrade that requires only a minimal amount of plastic sugery to the kit.
You will have some better results this way the first time I would suspect. A bad experience is one that we ALL try to avoid.

Aires kits have always been really good, and they tend to throw in all the little extras that make it look more "used." Always been a huge fan of Verlinden, too, and they tend to be a bit cheaper than Aires. Never seen a problem with fuzzy detail from Verlinden. Also, Aires has a tendancy to make their resin parts a little thin, so trimming is a bit of a chore without obscurring detail. Personal choice, really. Like Lee said, check your references, and go for the kit that looks most accurate. A little research goes a long way.

demono69

I have used both of them but only in F4s. Both make nice additions to the kit. The BB kit lets you detail the instrament panels as you want them to be. The Aries panels have a photo copy of the dials that you sandwich between the resin part and a photo etch piece. Looks very good. Hope this helps

It's really hard to say - most of the aftermarket cockpit sets tend to be pretty good - most times they are a pretty serious improvement over the basic kit cockpit.
It's best to try and study pictures of the real cockpit and have a look at the detail set to see how accurate they are.
Also, after a while, the rubber molds get a little worn and sometimes torn and this affects the final shape of the resin bits - sometimes to the point of making the added detail of the set fuzzy and indistinct.
I've got some Pavla 1/48 F-4 seats and a CMK (I think) 1/32 Tornado seat - the seats are a vast improvement on the level of kit detail, bit the detail is haphazard.
Not all detail sets have these defects. 90% of the detail sets out there are an improvement over the basic kit, so you have to have a look at the items.
I'm lucky enough to frequent a hobby shop that has heaps of this stuff in stock, so I can actually inspect the stuff to see if it's worth buying. There's also quite a few websites that can show you pictures of these sets like Hyperscale.
Wait for a little while - I'm sure there's a whole bunch of guys that check out this forum who have worked with F-14b detail sets and can give you their opinion.
Cheers
LeeTree