Scary seeing my name in all caps :-)
I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to, and pickups tend to be personal - one person's idea of what sounds good probably doesn't match another's in most cases.
For what it's worth, what I use is one of: Dazzos, Barbera, or Trance, all thru ToneDexter. For added "realism", I add an internal mic to all of these, and run through a Sunnaudio preamp that creates a stereo image from the combination. While the resulting stereo sound works great for me live, and I think it sounds the best of any pickup option I've tried for recording, I wouldn't say it competes with a well-mic'd guitar for recording, it's just not as bad as other alternatives I've tried. But my taste might not match yours.
Another approach I've tried is to use 2 ToneDexters (or work out your recording to be able to reuse one twice). For me, a good recorded guitar is stereo - but I'm always dealing with guitar as a featured instrument, so if you're working with a fuller mix, that may not be the case. Anyway, I did do some experiments where I created ToneDexter images for the different mic positions of a typical stereo mic setup, then recorded a (mono) pickup, reamping thru ToneDexter to create the left and right sides. Between ToneDexter and the enhanced sense of space of the stereo image, that sounded pretty decent too - tho still not competitive with real mics , it was just a fun thing to try.
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