Hipshot Contour + RMC piezo saddles or Fishman VS-50P?

[oyrgawd]

This is kind of half electronic, half hardware but I'm posting here...

I've been researching and trying to decide between a Fishman/Wilkinson VS-50P tremolo (with piezo saddles and Fishman's PowerChip preamp) and Hipshot's Contour tremolo with either GraphTech or RMC saddles and electronics.  

The Hipshot gets lots of good reviews for sound and feel.  I owned a Parker for awhile, and its ball-bearing tremolo was the smoothest I've played, plus it stayed in tune very well.  It also had Fishman saddles and electronics, which sounded okay for what I'm after-- just a little more detail to blend with a clean magnetic pickup sound --but not so hot alone.  

Anyway, Hipshot just started selling the Contour with GraphTech piezo saddles as an option.  Thing is, you're then stuck with the String Saver tone on your guitar, which from all descriptions sounds like a tone I'd dislike (less metallic but more trebly(according to strangers on the Internet )).

The upside is, Hipshot says they could sell me a Contour baseplate a la carte with the required holes for the piezo wires to go down into the guitar.  And...

RMC (which makes piezo saddles and electronics which get rave reviews and which *I've heard and liked myself*) says their "RS" saddles for PRS tremolos will fit the Hipshot Contour as well.  

Fishman's VS-50P is the piezo version of the Wilkinson VS-50, which gets good reviews for staying in tune, but is made with different materials by different licensers so I'm not sure whether I'd get steel or zinc saddles (note to self, I should just ask Fishman).  I'm worried it's going to sound too bright on its own, and that it won't feel as smooth as a ball bearing trem.  I'm worried it's a piezo pickup system first, and a good trem system second, when what I need is a good trem system first, with a good piezo system as a bonus.

So now I'm trying to decide:

A:  Get a Hipshot Contour with the piezo-ready baseplate and RMC saddles/electronics
or
B:  Get the Fishman VS-50P with the Fishman electronics

Reading back over this little novel/journal entry, I think I'm seeing that I want to pay extra and go the Hipshot/RMC route.  But I want to hear what people think about these options anyway....

 

[Orpheo]

I wouldn't go either way...

1: piezo is not my cup o' tea. I used to love 'm, but the saddles are very fragile, and the tone stinks I prefer a superlow-output pickup with a superclean amp, or just a coiltapped humbucker. Once I had a singlecoil which had a short somewhere inside, so it read 1k instead of 5, but that pickup, bolted down superlow, gave me the best acoustic tone ever.

2: hipshot is great. but, it can be better. I'm not a fan of the trem-king, but I do dig the super-vee trem. same studspacing, but a much nicer, better design.

just my 2 cents

 

[oyrgawd]

For the record, here's Fishman's response when I asked about materials used in the VS-50P:

"The VS-50P saddles are an alloy of different metals.  The TSV is
considerably warmer sounding than the VS50P, with a lot more punch in
the low end, at least plugged in."

Also, Orpheo, thanks for the input.  I may indeed just get the guitar finished and wired with the magnetics first before going and getting the piezo system.  But I'm kind of worried that I'll never get around to it if I don't just do it right away.  I found a local RMC-authorized repair shop that will sell me the hardware for under list, so that's a big help.

As for the tremolo, I keep looking into others and keep coming back to the Hipshot.  I'm using a Kramer Aluminum neck, so without heavy modification, I wouldn't be able to use the Super Vee string locks.  Also, I read that the leather bumpers they use cause not-quite-perfect pitch return.  Other than that, it's a pretty cool design.  The body I have on order already has a recessed Wilkinson route, so it'd be a shame to have to modify it right out of the gates.

 

[oyrgawd]

Oh yeah, and also the Super Vee wouldn't have off-the-shelf replacement saddles so I couldn't add piezos.  Again though, it's a pretty neat design.  Maybe I'll go for Super Vee 2.0 someday...