I've had two mccarties, one having a riff raff for a while, which is now in my main guitar, '73 lp custom, and sometimes I use a '78 greco with the black dog
my bandmate Zambelli has a bird non-rosewood mccarty that had a cold sweat for a while and now a miracle man
the type of tones we get is in the ballpark of most of the bands you mentioned
I use a heavily modded '73 50w JMP, which is more on the modern bogner shiva/custom audio od100 side (bassy, fat and smooth) than the 80's jose style amps (bright and focused), and Zambelli uses a 50w amp build by himself, which is more xtc/cameron-like (I have one too, but with a slightly different voicing) or his new preamp pedal, which is pretty much a cloned circuit of ch.3 of the diezel VH4S he had on his bench (I have a rack version of that channel, but the pedal sounds better and has the size of a "big" MXR pedal)
in our first EP we also used a 50w diezel einstein
that said, and considering our similar rigs, but different pickup species, we both get in the same tone ballpark
it just depends on how we set things and mess with the knobs
I was high output pickup user as well, now I prefer getting my clean tone from a high gain channel by using a low gain setting and pushing the amp with the overdrive pedal (now a ts9dx)
I still love the high output BKP models, but I can't stand other brands anymore, since most of them compress way too much
the lower output are just easier to deal with for me and they retain an airy feel to the mids under high gain that hotter pickups won't let you hear, but he still gets that kind of openness with his rig and by abusing dynamics
if you feel that you like high output better, go for it and just adapt your settings and playing
the riff raff is definitely airier and more open than the black dog, quite bright and sparkly
dog sounds softer on picking, darker on top and more dense sounding on the mids, so it's a bit juicier and more compressed
I've been thinking about the bridge mule these days (already have the neck one)
I was having heavy gas for the vhII (well, I'll keep having GAS for every BKP I didn't own), but the most driven mule clips on the BKP website really got me
all of the mentioned pickups sounded amazing through the einstein, the original vh4s and the pedal and rack clones
the vh4s v30 combo is quite midrangy and saturated, and a better match to the riff raffs bright, open and punchy nature (which is not that mid heavy like the website chart shows) instead of the middy and pushy nature of the black dog
