In my experience some tuners are obviously better than others, however locking i think is just such a better piece of mind and sperzel leads the way in this regard. Plus the gear ratio is pretty high too.
I am knowing more and more professional musician's, session guys and teachers who are switching out the saddles on all their fender style tremolos and replacing them with graphtech ones.
1. They sound better, try it and believe it
2. You don't break strings any more due to the weak alloys of normal saddles
3. You keep tune better because they are very frictionless
As far as it goes for
nuts i feel the slippery the better. You have nuts now with fall bearings employed in them and nuts made of every material under the sun. Graphtech do a very nice slippery night but graphite generally is my favourite and the best way to go for tuning stability.
As for stop tail bridges it really depends on your technique. The PRS wrap around bridge is pretty darn stable and friendly but has fixed intonation. Whereas i find the tune-o-matic gibson style bridge requires a certain technique due to how relatively high it sits off the body. A good example of someone refining the tune-o-matic is the bridge on the steve morse models, pretty nice and low set.
I think it really is a matter of preference but making sure it isn't made of cheap metals so that a groove can;t be worn in that will snap strings, i have seen this happen on far too many epiphone guitars for example. A bridge i would love to try out is the ibanez gibraltar bridge, it seems to be a nice hybrid bridge between prs and fender style and looks very classy and not crude. A lot of people worship the tele but i think the bridge and saddles on those things look like they were thrown together in a shed somewhere........
