As for me, almost all my electric guitars are HSH, and I use mostly the middle pickup in the 2 & 4 position, rarely in the "pickup alone" position 3 (but it happens). Keep in mind I'm in a pop/rock cover band, so I need versatility.
Anyway, I can tell you what I use on my go-to guitars:
- my main axe has a
Bill Lawrence L280. It works really well and it's noiseless when alone (but not in the in-between pos, but that's ok as I use this mostly clean). I can get a good strat-like quack out of them when used with my humbuckers split. Be warned that its looks are slightly different than the average SC pickup, though, if this matters to you.
- my strat has 3 single coils, and it's got all the strat tones that you'd expect. It's outfitted with a
D.Allen Echoes set (true single coils) which are basically the same as
Fender Custom 69 in neck/middle and
Duncan SSL-5 in bridge (except that the middle p/u is RW/RP, so I get noise cancellation when quacking).
- my newest guitar (have to post a NGD for this one!) is equipped with a
DiMarzio Area 61 in the middle. I wired it so that it does its humcancelling thing when alone and not when in pos 2 & 4, so that (if chooosing the correct coil from my split HB) I always get noise cancellation one way or the other. Tone wise it does what I want: good quack in 2 & 4 and not too much level difference compared with the Bare Knuckle Cold Sweat Humbuckers (obviously, there is some because HB are always hotter and I want my SC to stay clean). Out of the Area family I chose the 61 because it had the highest output and the trebles were very present.
For the record I tried the
Duncan SSL-2 in my newest axe and wasn't impressed. It was not bad but I found it lacked some brightness, which I want when playing clean. Also the wiring, before I swapped for the Area 61, was such that the 2 & 4 positions had the HB not split, so I couldn't get any quack out of that and the output was way too hot for my idea of clean (only because of the HB; the SSL-2 is a standard low output SC otherwise).
I fixed it when I installed the Area 61, but I had to use a more sophisticared pickup selector (I used a Schaller Megaswitch M) and figure out which half of the HB to use, and what the polarities where because I wanted noise cancellation everywhere. It's not difficult if you have a compass and a multimeter, but you have to think ahead.
Oh, and I don't set my mid pickup lower than the rest, I just learned to play around it, it's no big deal (the pickup selector location on strats, though, THAT is something I find annoying as I often bump into it when strumming). To each his own