Sonic Differences in Bridge Plate Styles

[gsh1968]

To be clear, the Standard/Player bridge I’m referring to is the block saddle with steel plate bridge used on the Mexican made Player series Teles and their Standard series predecessors, not any of the American models.

Those have vintage string spacing. A vintage bridge is a straight replacement.
The US Standard/Series/whatever the new model is called now had/have modern narrow 52.5mm spacing.

 

[Killing Floor]

Lots of otherwise very observant people forget a guitar is a spring-damper system and the pickups are only electromagnetic (unless piezoelectric) and the string vibrating in their field is the only energy that is transmitted to the amplifier. How the guitar sounds unplugged is not an indicator of how the guitar sounds amplified. BUT if you like the way it looks you’re gonna believe that it does.

 

[Humbuckers]

Those have vintage string spacing. A vintage bridge is a straight replacement.
The US Standard/Series/whatever the new model is called now had/have modern narrow 52.5mm spacing.

I bought a Standard/MIM bridge to replace a Gotoh modern style bridge (which in turn replaced a vintage style 3 saddle bridge) and found to my dismay that the MIM bridge has a slightly wider spacing than the Gotoh, making the space from the outer strings to the edges of the neck less higher up the neck than closer to the nut.