I have been using a wide saddle for about 8 years now, ever since I began my apprenticeship with Ervin, and try not to do anything on my guitars just because Ervin did it. Everything we do has a reason and purpose, and what works for one person may not be right for another.
As Howard pointed out, the overall affect on the tonality of the guitar is minimal at best with a wide saddle, and really isn't hugely necessary for intonation in standard tuning either. The main reason that I use it is that many of my clients do not play in standard tuning. They play in a multitude of alternate tunings, some ranging as low as B on the sixth string. Given the notes that the client uses most regularly, many have asked me to intonate the guitar for their most used tuning as opposed to standard. You see this most with players that stay primarily in DADGAD or such, but I also do it for C and B based tunings where the low and high strings are all over the map in terms of note separation. The result for me is that the standard orientation of a saddle with a thin saddle does not allow me to intonate all of the strings properly, with some either needing to move forward or back from the normal crown point provided by a standard thin saddle. Having the wider saddle gives me a bit more room, almost like a tunamatic bridge, and also allows me to create different saddles, with different intonation points for separate tunings without having to change the orientation or location of the saddle. This is the main reason that I use this method. It can be problematic, as Howard pointed out, with some under saddle pickups, but there are ways to overcome this.
The other benefit is that the normal method of intonating a standard thin saddle, as I was taught, was to essentially shape the profile of the saddle, and them locate the saddle so that the High E and Low E intonate and account for compensation, and everything else will fall into place within a margin of error that is acceptable to us, and doesn't sound too sharp or flat. Different people hear to different degrees though. My understanding is that most people hear within 6 cents of perfect pitch and that anything within that margin will sound good to most people, but I have also had people whose hearing is much more refined than that and having that level of difference can be hard for them to accept. The wider saddle allows me to intonate each string individually, using a strobe and a variation on some of the mathematical formulas out there to determine location based on how sharp or flat the note is. I can then move the crown point by filing it until the string intonates on a strobe within 1-2 cents.
These are the two main reasons I use this saddle.
Jason
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