Hey all, looking for some insight here.

I recently bought a couple of Fender 51's as project guitars. Both are going to be heavily modded. For those not familiar, that's a 25.5", maple-necked, basswood body with a top loading bridge. It's a strat-tele mutant of sorts, with a humbucker and a single coil in the neck. Bright and fairly twangy overall.

As much as I love to shift potential pickup combinations around in my mind, it's time I actually tried some stuff out, since my ear has to be the final judge on what works. I've been considering GFS and Stew Mac pickups, since I've determined that I can't comfortably spend more than the price of the guitar ($99) on the pickups. However, it occured to me that I'm going to be happier if I get a fantastic bridge pickup instead of an okay bridge and okay neck.

To that end, I need some recommendations. Given the following criteria, if you could have only one bridge humbucker, what would it be and why?:

-To be used for instrumental rock and my own mediocre take on the blues
-Crisp, with some body and "air" in the sound; depth of tone
-Takes to parallel and splitting reasonably well ("usable" in either mode)
-Good under low to high gain, acceptable cleans
-Attitude/character

Of the pickups I've tried in thei guitar so far (Norton, stock and Paf PRO), the Paf PRO has sounded best -- good cut under gain, decent growl. It was a tad too nasal, though, and pretty flat sounding, not very organic. Great to listen to, but not as much fun to play.

My bachellorettes so far are PATB (1 or 3), VHot PAF, and maybe the Custom. Suggestions? Admonishments?

Thanks in advance for either.

-mononoaware