I have a VHII in ash American Series HSS-strat, paired with Mother's Milk. The VHII is bright, but not piercing. Actually it is very balanced. It's an articulate pickup. Dig in and you can get wicked screaming tones. Harmonics jump out with ease. Cleans up very nice to certain singlecoil-vocal quality.
In my custom MXG swampash-HSS-strat I have a Crawler paired with two Irish Tours. The Crawler is fat, has beefy mids, but enough treble to bite if necessary. It has PAF-flavour, just with extra balls and a bit more compression. Splits great. This is a very good allrounder from everything between blues and hardrock.
There are more good contesters: the Abraxas, which is a bit milder Crawler, still with good beef in alder, but a more chimey, airy topend. I reckon even a Mule will serve you well. PAF59-voiced. However I get the best split-results with the Crawler, since it's roughly twice the dc-resistance of the IT. Maybe you should look at something between 12 and 15k.