Excellent summation! I find that EMGs are wonderful in their transparency and "unintrusiveness". On the other hand, they are also a little characterless in comparison with their organic quirky brothers :-D
On a slightly off-topic sideline, I think the current marketing blurb talk for a "truer" sound is currently "hi-fi" making out that a semblance of realism, or lack of noise/distortion is inherent in active pickups. Misleading by analogy. In reality it's the build of passive pickups (strong magnets) that cause the problem as you explained! I wouldn't use "hi-fi" as an analogy of this difference. My analogy against hi-fi in a reversed vein would be using a flint as a needle on a record player.
Okay, I'll say it before somebody else does: "what the hell are you on about, Carl?!"