Re: Help with pickup choice
Capacitor type doesn't matter at all, but value does. It's worth buying several different cheap caps and trying them out one after the other until you find the value that makes you happy to use your tone control more often. Usually I prefer .022 on the bridge and .033 on the neck, but it very much depends on how you use your tone pots and the pickups you're running. If you never/rarely use your tone pots it doesn't make much difference at all.
If you want a different tone (brighter) but no noise, you might prefer series/parallel to splitting coils. It will have no noise, but will not sound the same as split. Splits are more like a single coil, parallel is like a lower output 'bucker with some bass rolled off. It's a nice option to have, especially in the neck. My personal preference is to split, because I like to have single coil tones . . . but you'll have to deal with the hum/noise.
Before you do anything though, check the values of your volume and tone pots. If they're less than 500K (like if the read around 300k or lower), you'll notice the guitar gets much brighter and sounds a lot more open just by putting in 500s.
As far as pickups go, for blues/classic rock/country you could do worse than a set of Seth Lovers. If you play heavier music, maybe a Seth neck and a medium output bridge.
