EMG makes some pickups that work wherever and whatever you put them in, too. They have the passive HZ series that I've used in basses and steel guitars, and the wider bass pickups work in 10-string and 12-string pedal steels. It's just, like, strings and frequencies and stuff.
The primary reason that "Leo got it right the first time" and Gibson's Seth Lover is considered a genius and all is because they kept prototyping pickups until they had ones that didn't suck too bad, and then musicians and amplifier makers kept experimenting to make it sound better, and then we spent forty years listening to the "classic rock" results, which sedulously* taught us what sounds "right" and "wrong." Les Paul himself thought that passive hi-impedance pickups were ridiculous from an electronic standpoint - it's only been the fact that most amps are designed around them that keeps us using them. Pickups like Bill Lawrence, Lace and Alumitone sound "thin" or trebly to people who have gotten used to the sound of a muffled, all-middy humbucker through speakers with a massive 2.5K rolloff, but they sound great if you know what to match them with. And, there are frequently wild rebels like Billy Sheehan or Dimebag Darrell who hook up something weird and "wrong" and everyone's amazed that it can sound "good."
Everything's interactive.....
*(look it up, you'll remember it better)
