Over on a nearby thread, Kirbonite expressed a wish that there was some way to mute the 5th, so as to amle an "instant plectrum".
Here's what I did, last summer.
I was invited to sit in on a flatbed truck, in a parade, with a Dixieland band.
So I cut a notch in the SIDE of the bridge leg, loosened the 5th, and that got the string down far enough that it didn't get picked.
And I kept enough tension on it so that the tailpiece didn't move enough to make the rest of the strings untunable.
It worked well enough for an hour on the float.