Thanks all for the responses. I had other things hit my plate that distracted me from this, but came back to it today.
 
First, I bought this guitar to carry the pickup for my GR-30 way back when because it had a fixed bridge. The performance of the pickups were never to my liking, so it occurred to me that actually playing it (in any tuning) requires this to be fixed first. Initially I thought the cover plates could be removed, but quickly found this to be a no-go, since the plate is actually what is holding the pickup in place (nice "wtf" moment)... the pickup will bottom out to the back plate, but what keeps it from"just falling out" is the cover plate's friction on both the back plate and mounting ring! The pickup is potted to the face plate, but other than that there is nothing holding it in place. Unreal...
 
Option 2, I still had the PAF PRO from my old guitar and put that into the bridge. PITA installation since the only way to access anything is via the F-hole, so reassembly required a needle, thread, a magnet, and some engineering trickery. Not a process I would recommend to anyone, since the entire harness needs to come out to replace the bridge pickup.
 
End result was impressive, although I still need to do adjustments since the neck pickup isn't going to cut it. Clean the guitar sounds like crap, but distortion on the bridge alone sings like a bird, picks up every harmonic under the sun, and has sustain out the wazoo. I actually compressed the mounting springs fully and the bridge pickup is still not close enough and is "level," so physically it is cocked to the strings (neck edge is higher). I will have to address this when I noodle out the neck pickup. Right now the neck pickup is so weak in comparison that trying to meld them just sucks the life out of the bridge, and the neck alone lacks clarity.
 
For the moment the guitar is back in standard tuning, but I will probably keep it at a half step down in the long run. I will need to adjust intonation once there, but may very well stay with 10s, but will probably try out 11s at some point.