" It's interesting to see violins are intentionally wonky and unbalanced."
It's hard to generalize across platforms between the violin and the guitar. I make both, worked for some years with Carleen Hutchins, and knew Fred Dickens, who did work on guitars, so I've got some handle on this.
The problem of getting sound out of a fiddle arises because the bow drives the string more or less parallel to the plane of the top. To move air the soundboard needs to move perpendicular to it's plane. Early fiddles, some of which were basically just guitars with high curved-top bridges, have a thin, nasal sound and lack power (I've made a couple). If you remove the sound post from a violin (pick a fairly sturdy one) you can check this out, although the bar will produce some asymmetry.
They had addressed the issue of down load on the top in two ways: a post between the top and back top prop up the top, and a ridge along the center line to stiffen the top. The ridge was originally simply an area that was not carved thinner, which also reinforced the center join. Later they found that a glued in bar was better, and a bar that was a bit off center was better still. One reinforcement made it 'trebly' because of the added stiffness and the other made it 'bassy' from the asymmetry. Somewhere around 1550 somebody got the idea of using both, and the modern violin was born with both added bass and treble.
The post pretty much 'nails' the point on the top where it sits, so that the bridge pivots around that point. This produces vertical movement in the bass foot of the bridge which sits above the bass bar. The bar distributes that movement along the length of the top, producing a monopole area to pump air. With this combination the tone and power increased enough that they went from three strings to four (adding the low G).
In short, the post and bar are an effort to retrieve a poor drive geometry in the violin. Carleen used to say that the efficiency of the violin is about half that of the guitar, in large part because of the small monopole area. They get away with it by dumping in a lot more power than we can with plucked strings.
I've tried putting sound posts in archtop guitars, and have seen a couple of flat top and Classical guitars with posts. With some post positions you can get a bit more sound, but basically it's best used to kill the top and cut out feedback at the 'main air' pitch.
I've always wanted to do some work with lute acoustics. I exchanged a couple of messages with Robert Lundberg about tracking his tap tuning method of top tuning using Chladni patterns, but he died before we could do that. I do have a braced top, but it would have been nice to see where he would have taken it, rather than flying blind. One of my students is a lute player, and at some point (in my copious free time) I'd like to do some patterns on an assembled lute, and run some input admittance tests. I suspect the setup taps into the twice-per-cycle tension change of the strings better than the guitar does, but given the lac of power in that string mode it's probably more of a 'timbre' thing and a source of power. For that matter, it could also enhance the 'zip' pitch of the strings, but I have yet to look at that aspect on gut strings (again, copious free time...).
It's been a while since I followed the latest research on violin. My understanding is that measurements carried out in collections have indicated that the graduation and arching patterns tend to fall into 'schools'. This makes some sense, since both are methods of fine tuning the stiffness distribution in the plate. The 'curtate cycloid' arch pattern seems to be a characteristic of the later Cremona school; post-plague Nicolo Amati, Strad, and so on. The museum specimens show 'reverse graduations' on these: more or less uniform thickness except for a thinner area along the center line of the top. When I started out making violins and archtops I didn't know about the cycloid arches, and used 'standard' graduations on the tops. I used 'x' bracing on archtop guitars. Most of my more recent guitars have used reverse grads on the tops, and some of the backs have been uniform, rather than graduated. It would be hard to point to much systematic difference in the sound. My most recent archtop was built as an 'homage' to a Lloyd Loar L-5, and used 'standard' grads and 'parallel' bars rather than the X. The customer wanted an 'Eddie Lang' sort of acoustic sound (no pickup), and it seems to have worked. Sadly, we were unable to get it together with the original for comparison.
Power transfer is a function of input admittance: basically the impedance match between the string and bridge at the driving point at a particular frequency. The function of the the bridge is to define the vibrating length of the string by providing enough of a mis-match to keep most of the energy in the string. The 'wolf' note on the 'cello is an example of what happens when the match is too close: the string doesn't 'know' how long it is at it's fundamental because of bridge motion, and shifts upward an octave. This eliminates the signal that was driving the problematic resonance, the bridge stops moving, and the fundamental length is defined again. Rinse and repeat, several times per second....
A bridge down near the end will probably have high impedance at most pitches, and little problem with 'wolf' notes. You'll see lots of sustain, even with a light top and low arch. So long as the top isn't too 'lumpy' I suspect the vibration will find it's home, so to speak, and you could get a decent sound. The more I think of it, the more I'd go with a low arch and thin top. I've made a couple of arch top Classical guitars, using 12mm arch height (rise from the upper surface of the edge to the top at the bridge) and 3mm thickness, on a 16" 'small Jumbo' platform. They sounded good, and were stable. The bracing for a top that has the bridge as far down as you're contemplating is going to be an 'interesting' challenge. I'm thinking of a sort of 'H', with a short top and the cross bar just above the bridge. Maybe....
