why?
Because of magnetic permeability. Say, neodymium magnets have low permeability, but high coercivity. In other words, if you compare the inductance of the same coil, wound on a neodymium magnet and a piece of nail of the same size, there will be a huge difference.
Of course, I agree, the input and the driver must be as close as possible, but still it's interesting to experiment. With a mounted driver, I know the distance between the bridge pickups and the driver, I can compute the phases for each harmonic accurately (and yes, for each string and each fret), I can use FFT to adjust the phases in conformance with the string vibration at a particular position. The overall latency can also be accurately calculated and/or adjusted. So, it may sound crazy, but I can tweak the signal very flexibly with DSP, which you can never achieve with analog circuits. Finger mounted driver won't work properly in this case, but still can be potentially used for fancy/strange effects.
Right, it's going to be more like acoustic sound, at least, with Graphtech pickups. However, I also have a hexaphonic mag pickup at the bridge, which can also be used.
I'm not sure either, we will see. If the strings can be drivable at about 5mm, it can be used. At least, in my early experiments with a very weak driver (250 ohms coil) and a bridge single coil pickup, I could start 2nd, 3rd, up to 5th harmonic by just moving the coil along the string.
BTW, for a true 2D sustainer you would need stereo pickups and drivers placed like this:
string
*
/ \
drivers
McSeem