Making things brighter without boosting? hmmmmm......
Several ways to accomplish things like that. Consider 3d space, not just frequencys. I always like to put my snare just a little tiny bit to the right and my hihats just a tiny bit more. this clears iup a bitmore room for other frequencys in the dead center. If you have a lead or somthing or guitar, maybe pan it left a bit, and have its reverb or delay or chorus or whatever panned to the right. eq the both a bitdifferently.
Sometime you can make things stand out a bitmore by doing things you wouldnt think of at first. for instance, sometimes you can make your hats stand out a bit more by cutting a bit off the highs and boosting the mids and miudlows a bit, same for snares. for basses you can boost some of the higher frequencies too, you can maybe use a parametric eq, have a deep low end, and a small bandpass maybe around 2k or so. maybe double a very low deep bass with apunchier higher one, taking several different sound system capabilities into consideration a bit more.
Just some thoughts.
Peace