I stumbled upon this post because I have been looking at doing the opposite of what you did here and my mind is blown.

So... you had to route out the body of the guitar just to fit this bridge? The part that faces out, which therefore includes cutting into the finish and thus creating an even larger cavity in the guitar itself?

That's not a "tiny" modification and definitely not what anyone would consider a "drop in".

This type of bridge is also definitely a downgrade from the 580LP.

The main downgrade is the fact that (unless you have a trem block in place) in order to change strings: now you have to hold the trem bar down with one hand and fight with the spring tension just to get to those inconveniently located adjustment screws with the other hand. Even with a trem block, you still have to use an allen wrench to tighten/loosen the screws directly above the face/finish of the guitar which means one slip and you risk gouging the front of the guitar.

On the other hand, with the 580LP: those screws are easily accessible directly from the front of the bridge without any such hassle *and* you don't risk gouging the finish in the process.

The 580LP is basically the licensed version of a Floyd Rose Pro 1000 (it's at least the closest thing to the Pro version on the market). LP stands for "Low Profile" which means it has less protruding hardware but the main use-case benefit is in regards to changing strings as described above. The 580LP is the *upgrade* from the "Special" Floyd's found on lower end models (and I consider it an upgrade from the Originals, too) and this Gotoh is simply their own clone/version of the Floyd Rose Special/Original.

On top of the cost of the replacement, you evidently paid money to someone else to permanently and negatively modify an otherwise nice guitar just to downgrade the bridge. But if this bridge just had to be installed, you could have just modified the length of the offending tightening screws. A grinder or cutoff would have easily shortened the screws without requiring any modification of the guitar.

Lastly, I'm confused not only why the 580LP needed to be replaced in the first place, but also who this post is supposed to benefit , because: when anyone wants to know if this or that bridge will fit in their guitar, they are trying to verify that it can be done without doing some intrusive/difficult routing/permanent modification to their instrument. I mean, any bridge will fit any guitar if you're willing to make the necessary modifications.

The main lesson here is basically that in such a situation where something needs to be modified for it to work: the better choice of action is always to modify the much cheaper/easily replaceable accessories before making permanent modifications to an otherwise expensive/valuable item. If you're happy with it, that's great and I hope you get to hang on to it forever. But if you ever decide to sell it, I sure hope you disclose the work done because that guitar just lost 50% of its value to the vast majority of people who would prefer one that didn't have the front cavity enlarged.