EMG's don't suck for cleans if you don't have an adversion to using the volume knob or putting a Treble Bleed cap into one. Heck, I use my Jag-Stang to emulate a Tele when I need both a heavy and a thin sound in a song. The trick is mastering the volume knob.
Or you could go the route I did on my Explorer and put a 60 in the bridge, those clean up nicely, because they are not all that high output. Remember, the 81 is the screaming mofo Metal pickup, that's why Zakk, Metallica, and so on, use that particular model in the bridge position, because it's hot and distorted. The 60 is more of a vintage PAF style pickup, and the lowest one can go is get an old EMG H model from the 70's/80's, which is basically a single coil in a humbucker form factor.
In metallica, James Hetfield is the one using the EMG 81/60 combination, usually in his Explorers, 60 in the neck, and 81 in the bridge, Hammett uses dual 81 humbuckers in most of his guitars.
A 16K OHm humbucker is going to give you about the same kind of cleans as an EMG 81, so if you are after a less distorted clean sound, I would probably not go higher than 12K, if even that. 16K is the area Seymour Duncan Invaders and Dimebuckers, and even the stock Jagmaster bridge position pickups are. It's not all ohms tho, some of it is the magnet used, which is where the output differences in EMG seem to come from (Ceramic 81 vs Alnico 60).
