I go for similar tones. For me, I’ve found the key to getting decent n+m and m+b strat tones is to find pickups that end up being more similar than different (Henderson uses three of the same pickup for this reason). This is difficult to achieve when balancing split humbuckers with a middle single (and why players such as Vai, Gilbert, Govan, etc. have signature middle pickups in their guitars which were designed to be in parallel with the split humbuckers).
The Bluesbucker is my go-to neck pup, but I find it so hot in split mode (which is the whole point) that I need a hot middle pup to balance with it. In one guitar, I have a Bluesbucker paired with a Duncan Quarter Pounder middle. It’s in no way a vintage strat sound, but I’m much happier with the combo than I am with the guitar that pairs the BB with an FS-1 (the FS-1 just isn’t hot enough to hold its own in parallel). I have the opposite problem with a guitar in which I have a PAF Master neck paired with a Dark Matter 2 single as an experiment (The DM dominates a humbucker that frankly wasn’t designed with splitting in mind).
Still, the output rating isn’t everything - I tried pairing a Bluesbucker with a Jem single, and found their voicings simply didn’t gel together at all - Same experience in pairing it with a Duncan SSL-3.
Do you have all these pickups on-hand, or are you exchanging/selling them between sets? I ask because a PAF Pro neck paired with a True Velvet is fairly common; and your personal results would help us counter-recommend a pairing.
For the bridge humbucker, the Holdsworth recipe is a low-output, double screw PAF through several gain and EQ stages, along with a lot of processing (e.g. UD Stomp delays). I currently like the Al DiMeola bridge and Breed neck pickups for this, though, because their fatter sounds and medium output means I can get in that ballpark with fewer gain stages. Honestly, you can get that “Fusion”-y, creamy lead tone with all kinds of gear and pickups - So it’s probably going to come down to what your rig is. If you’re using an Axe FX or something, then the pickup is going to end up being one of the least crucial components in the signal chain. But if you’re using something like a Fender amp with two particular stompboxes, then the right pickup will make all the difference in getting you into that ballpark.
