Frets are not always where they are supposed to be. I once made a "fretcheck" on my at that time 6 instruments (I can tell you how, if wanted). The best was a neck on a homemade banjo, that had a fretbord I had bought from StewMac, and the worst was a copy of the Beatles bass made in Taiwan, And the second worse was an old Gibson guitar that I still have and love. But I had never noticed anything before checking it out, and you do not hear minor irregularities. :). Steen

I never thought about curing intonation problems with a bridge.
I hung out with some electric guitar players and we had discussions on why they had adjustable string-length saddles and they talked about "sweetening" the notes chords to their tastes.
I wanted that for my banjo but soon figured out that a heavy mechanism like they had would destroy the tone and power of an acoustic banjo that is greatly affected by a few extra grams of weight in the bridge.

I talked to guitar luthiers about my decision to "zero" the bridge at the 12th fret and reap the benefits up and down the neck using the 12th fret as a "center" and they agreed that the 12th fret shape would improve the intonation up or down from that point.I've found that to be true upon close inspection with my Peterson Strobe tuner.

People enjoy playing guitars with adjustable saddles and they enjoy acoustic guitars with straight saddles.(Though there is a bit of "comp" in a Martin saddle.

The "W" patterns seen in electric guitar saddles are very similar to my compensated bridge pattern.
There are advantages and choices there.

Since the popularity of CNC and programmable cuts one can pretty much say that nuts and frets all agree with each other on banjos and guitars.
Homemade instruments might need a second look,I suppose,but there's no reason for that in these well documented times.
The truth is easy to find.

I completely agree. An intonation based on similarity with 12. fret chime and fretting on all strings is the best we can have. Some people think this can be found also in straight bridges, but I tink - only very close, and that may be good enough for some. Some people choose a straight bridge knowing that the intonation could be a little better ( - me) because it FEELS good enough (not knowing that it could feel still better :)).
I think that one day I will save my soul and buy one of yoour bridges Steeve, because all you write make perfectly sense to me. Also interesting to hear a little about the guitar path to your bridges. Steen

I went through a phase about 15 years ago, where I thought I needed compensated bridges, because so many folks here said we did. I tried some commercially available, and even made several of my own. I learned that for my playing ability, and my banjos, it didn’t make enough difference to worry about. By physics, open positions fret a little sharp by the nut. Action and relief varies things along the neck. And my fretting pressure differs between solidly grabbing chords, quick vs slow slides, crisp pull offs, different hammer ons. Etc. Even different fingers vary, and reaching for notes with a pinky can be different than landing the same note with ring or index. So even if I had a perfect banjo with a perfect bridge, my own playing varies enough to screw it all up. So my theory is that the longer we play what we have, the more we learn it’s nuances, and the more our own ear, and playing imperfections, offset our machines imperfections, and we make good music. I haven’t used a compensated bridge in many years.

It's a world of choices.