Right. I don't really care wether you like this or not, I haven't recoded these to sound great, I have recorded them to try to give a representative A vs B test. This concept seems to bother some people so I'll say this using very small words

it is an A vs B test.

Could either sound better?

Yes they could !

Would that involve EQing them differently?

Yes it would.

Would this lend its self to the pepsi challenge, altering only one variable ?

No it would not.

so, which one is the strat, which is the variax.

Recorded using the neck PU into a PodXT Live set to patch 1b @ 24/44.1 into Logic