Re: Hot Rails at the middle and neck
Dave Murray of Iron Maiden uses Hot Rails in all 3 positions of his Strats. He uses the neck pickup a lot for solos, and even on cleans (see the intro to Brave New World) he nails a really sweet tone. With the neck pup, the obvious issue would be it being too muddy, which in my experience, it is, but Dave Murray gets an awesome tone out of it. It depends on the amp I guess.
What guitar/amp would you be using?