I've always thought my R35 held up well against banjos in jams, etc. It certainly compares favorably to my Deering Sierra. I wanted to try another bridge just to see if I could get more depth out of the 3rd and 4th strings, so I planned to stop the Kat Eyz booth at Spbgma.
When I stopped by Mike was spending some time in discussion with a professional player looking for a bridge for his banjo. He went into some detail as to what that customer was looking for in terms of tone, and changes from his present bridge, and recommended a bridge.
When it came my turn I expected him to measure my bridge and hand me a bridge. But no. He set me down (well actually I fell over my case), handed my banjo to LouZee Picker (Brian) to play, and we discussed the tone I wanted. He checked the spacing, bridge height and current bridge weight.
As Mike starts going through his assortment of bridges to find the right one, Brian and Phil starts disassembling my banjo. Strings come off, tail piece comes off, and start adjusting the coordinating rods. About the time I think my banjo is dust, they start re-assembling everything, adjust tailpiece height, strings go back on, and then the bridge (a beautiful KatEyz Spiced pegged bridge). Brian adjusted intonation, and immediately you could tell a huge difference in volume, and projection. The tone was spot on as to what I wanted.
During my time at the booth, Mike, Brian and Phil's only interest was in making my banjo sound better. Certainly what I paid for the bridge was insignificant to the time and effort they put in. They made a dramatic difference that shows as good as the R35 sounds out of the box, with some tweaking it can sound so much better.