I never gave ones thought. Even though I'm a but of a Line 6 Junkie; (DT 25amp and brand new Pod HD500x) I thought they looked wrong without the pickups. Kinda like why I never played with Barbie dolls..... They just look wrong undressed.....
And the build quality of the first few series was (rumoured) to be pretty ordinary.
But upgrading my Pod the other day opened my eyes when I saw a) the build quality (strat copy) and b) the tuning options as well as the fact that the amp, pod and guitar all talk to each other. You can set different patches to go from EVERLONG heavy in drop D to Crazy little called love 12 string, to open G for slide blues etc etc.
Sorry to plug - but I'm now ranting about my BKP's on the Line 6 site too....
Just a thought, if I get a P90 single coil -I wonder if I'm going to need to be able to coil split for the different modelling effects...?