To leave my discussion with drurb about... (I think we both showed that we want to try our best to avoid this in the future, so I won't comment again.)
...and come back to the subject:
In my experience (from bridge wing, bridge foot and Full Circle pickups) and talking to people using other pickups (like the Wilson),
the closer the pickup sits to the strings the more intense is the pizz attack against the sustaining sound and also the brighter the sound is (maybe a special case with the bridge wing pickup for getting resonances of the wing).
Bowing intensity without any volume adjusting is better in relation to pizz the more away the pickup is from the string.
The closer to the top (on the top like bridge foot pickups) the more reverb like reflections from the top make the sound a bit muddy and unclear.
Sound is another thing. It heavily depends on the construction, mounting/pressure etc., but also on position between string and top.
I first thought the Full Circle is the worst pickup I tried. Heavy resonances etc. It got mounted as it should. After turning the pickup a bit it got quieter but the huge resonances were gone. I'm not totally happy with it, but will decide if I use the Shadow 965NFX (similar to Realist), First Circle (sensitive side on top), microphone or purely acoustic bass on band, music style and volume. I may like it upside down, but don't want to buy a new bridge for that just to try. Selling the First Circle and not buying a new bridge might get enough money for a single side Yamahiko. Maybe this sounds a bit better. But I will stay with mine for the next time.
The position somewhere in or near the leg seems to be optimal, so the Yamahiko, the First Circle, the BassBalsereit and Wilson K1 at the bridge leg seem to do the job nicely. I think the Upton Source will fall into the same category.
Unfortunately any of these need some modification of the bridge (cutting the bridge foot some with drilling into the bridge foot, hole in or on top of the bridge foot). The only one which needs no modification and could be put anywhere on the bridge is the Realist SoundClip. But this one has its own special issues, one of them that it is heavy and should not put on the bass permanently to avoid damage of the bass.
So we either damage our bridge in some way or live with a suboptimal solution. If we accept some "damage" the only thing we can do is deciding about the kind damage we accept best (and the kind of sound we get by it).
I just think that the Source is kind of a Full Circle with the metal adjuster stuff around replaced by some wood. (But then I cannot turn it for a better sound and must accept what it delivers.) Let's see/hear if it is better than the known solutions.
And yes, we can try to use our best using scientific methods and knowledge to get close to our goal, but since things are often enough more complex than we might think and some important knowlege might not exist (at all or in the developers), at the end we need to try to optimize. And sometimes we can learn from the results.
The musician is not interested how much work and knowledge was put into the development, he wants a good product, so this counts at the end. But scientific routes could help finding new ways to approach a goal, sometimes with good results and sometimes not.
