depends on what sound you want. most Les Pauls now come with cool splitting technology now (both of mine have it) that mal’s the Humbucker sound more single coil - ish. it’s not a true single coil sound, but definitely brighter and springier than a humbucker.
my les paul is a 1996 i bought with funds earned from baggin groceries at hi nabor, it doesnt have this fancy new and unnecessary technology. i remember at one point gibson made an LP that had robots turning the tuners. this is very silly. simpler=better. ideal guitar has one humbucker, one volume knob. or even really a on/off switch would be fine. a quiet quality one like the les paul switch not a shitty one like the strat 5 position rocker
guess you and i will just have to disagree then. part of the beauty of guitars is the WIDE range of sounds and tones you can get from them. to say that any one particular setup is superior to any of the others is IMO just not even possible to quantify.
Jerry Garcia had his guitars built with switches for 12 separate voicings. Gave him 144 options to get the sound he wanted for any song he played. I wouldn't need all that and who does but it would be cool to have onboard pedal electonics that would be easy to control. Maybe with presets for some things you want often like for the distortion and reverb together.
pedals and amps tech is so cheap these days i have a $50 vox stomplab effects unit that makes any guitar sound like a dying infant alien or stradivarius. it works great if you start with that solid clean tone from the nice quiet simple humbucker, not a single coil twanging buzz machine
here is David Gilmour playing Comfortably Numb in Pompeii. A guy widely considered an all-time Guitar God. Playing what many consider his best solos. Obviously single coils since it’s a Strat (that particular stray holds the record for being most expensive guitar ever sold). And he plays the solos in the neck position. that humbucker in bridge position you love is not capable of producing this particular sound. Not even with Gilmour himself playing it. George Harrison isn’t really known for any one guitar. He used a pile of different ones throughout his career. Why? because they all sounded different. So as his music changed stylistically, so did his guitar of preference.
i have a setup that allows you to choose a preset tone based off songs. want the tone Jimi used on All Along the Watchtower? no problem, it’s there. i set it up with that tone and start swapping guitars and guess what happens? they all sound different from one another. hell even my two Les Pauls sound different from each other. using same wire, same amp, same settings, same pickup selection. Heck they even have same exact brand/style/size strings. and I can’t make either of them sound like my Strat or my semi-hollow ES-339. so no, you ain’t going to convince me tech today is capable of exactly duplicating a tone.
and actually, both my Les Pauls have coil splitting technology. so in actuality, they don't even sound like themselves. again, same amp, same wire, same settings, hell SAME GUITAR and SAME PICKUP. sounds tonally different depending if I have the knob pulled out (single coil-ish) or pushed down (true humbucker). same guitar with same settings, i can choose: Bridge (humbucker) Bridge (split) Middle (both humbuckers) Middle (bridge-single ; neck-humbucker) Middle (bridge-humbucker ; neck-single) Middle (both single) Neck (humbucker) Neck (single) That is eight noticeably different tones I can get from the exact same guitar without touching the amp, pedals, wire, etc.
david gilmore is a chump. alex lifeson, zakk wylde, dimebag darrell, those guys play actual real guitars with humbuckers. single coild pickups sound like a homeless vagrant dragging a cat out of a dumpster
