Having fallen backwards down this rabbit hole a few years back (and finally gotten off the crutches and out of the cast and neck brace) here are my thoughts: The weakest link in the striped series guitar is the Basswood body. Basswood is a crapshoot - some Basswood guitars sound decent and some sound like absolute ass.
I now own two early Frank replicas built with proper northern hard ash bodies. One has a traditional six screw trem and the other has a non-fine tuner Floyd with a big brass block. Both of these guitars sound better hands down than any Basswood body guitar I have ever owned, borrowed or noodle around on. I have had a variety of low to mid output, pickups in both of my ash Frank builds, and they never disappoint. Actually, the differences between a Duncan 59, a Duncan 78, a Duncan 59 custom hybrid and a Duncan whole Lotta humbucker are so subtle and so nuanced that you would be hard-pressed to tell the difference plugged into a pissed off amp. Plugging the exact same guitar and amp into a variety of cabinets and speakers will give you way more difference in tone than fiddling with the pick ups at that point.
I do own a couple of EVH striped series guitars that I built as partscasters using EVH Basswood bodies sourced from stratosphere. I do believe that the thick glossy paint job helps firm up the tone of Basswood, which can sometimes be a bit mushy and spongy. For my money, the best sounding pickup in these EVH bodies is the Jalen pinnacle with a ceramic magnet. The ceramic magnet helps tighten up the low end, and add some sizzle up top. My Stripe builds are sort of novelty guitars, when compared with my two northern hard ash builds - which just blow them away when it comes to tone.
