Re: cutting through
Not as far as I can tell. There's a lot of professional players using Ducan Single coil-sized 'buckers. For instance, Tom Morello of Audioslave- and formerly rage against the machine- uses hot rails in the bridge of one of his strats. I use a JB jr in the bridge of my strat occasionally into a Randall RH200 half stack and it cuts through the mix pretty well. That's just me, though. Anyone else?