If you imagine a point somewhere near halfway between BEMCI/RC and 5E, you'll be the closet to what I like in my D&D. In fact, no matter what version I've run (even 4E), I tend to twist it in that direction. I was reasonably happy with running 5E with some of the defaults scaled way back to closer to BEMCI/RC or AD&D. I'd be reasonably happy taking a tweaked BEMCI/RC and adding something to it. The problem was that "reasonably happy" wasn't good enough anymore.
My biggest issue is that I do want just a touch of "skills" and a tad more mechanics than the B/X style. I not only don't want race as class but also have never exactly reconciled to D&D races having cultural things embedded in the package. I'm not exactly comfortable with "class as archetype" and merely make another class as soon as you want a new spin on the archetype. I'm just not wired that way when I GM. I'm also tired of the other extreme, the generic Hero System or GURPs approach, or even the bastard GURPs/D&D approach of the 3E framework with a lot of specifics layered on top. There are some thing in BEMCI/RC that are kind of clunky. However, from my point of view, the WotC editions and even 2E in a lot of ways goes too far the other way.
I'm doing my own version now. WotC shenanigans pushed me over the edge but this has been brewing for years. I took the BEMCI/RC framework, lopped off the upper end, embedded a handful of customization options, changed the ability scores around to suit me, flattened and shortened the power curve, introduced a handful of modern mechanics to simplify it, and have gotten off to the races. Every time I had a question of compatibility with D&D or making it work the way I wanted, I took the latter. That meant rewriting every damn spell but so be it. Two successful play tests so far and organizing a longer game. Sure, the thing has been stretched and twisted so much that I doubt three people here would call it D&D. You can kind of see that it is distantly related. You could get something approximating the kind of game I'm running by tweaking BEMCI/RC or AD&D, but this approach was easier and more fun in the long run.