Yeah the more I started thinking about the way the electronics work the more I thought it was a bad idea too. Originally I thought it wasn't that much more than having 2 hummers running at once like on my Ibanez. And then I thought one of my Strats has a neck-on switch which lets me run all 3 pickups so what if that was on the Ibanez and I had a 3rd hummer in the middle instead of the single?
But in all those cases each magnet pole is wrapped in a different coil circuit not all wrapped together in a single coil. I guess they're also further apart so the pull isn't as great.
Anyway it would have been nice to have a block of 6 slimline singles that could rotate 90 degrees and a gazillion-way switch for all sorts of combos.