Ken,
I'm always interested in learning new short game shots so out of curiousity when you say "With a high-bounce wedge, you can thump the ground with the bounce and hit a ball off bare dirt" do you mean high bounce with wide flange or high bounce with narrow flange and what loft are you referring to? No criticism of your suggestion is intended, I'm just searching for more more short game knowledge - I reckon that you can never have enough variety of short game shots at your disposal!
All the best.
Excellent questions.
I started playing these shots a loong time ago with a Wilson "Original" R90 (the 80s reissue not one from the 30s). They have a fairly wide sole and a bounce angle I'd guess at roughly 15*.
Then for a while I used an Auld Golf sand wedge with a slightly narrower sole but a similar bounce angle.
During this time I played almost all my golf at a muni in Pierre where the gumbo soil around the greens was packed hard and grassless by cart traffic. Since many of the greens were elevated so hitting a high shot off those lies was essential. What I figured out with the R90 was that by hitting what felt like a bunker shot, I could get the ball up off ground so hard your steel spikes would hardly penetrate.
It sounds stupid, but the feel is as if you pushed the ground down enough to get the wedge in the space under the ball. The bounce is essential to keep the leading edge from digging in.
Re. Equipment, since then I have gone through Ping Eye2 BeCu 60*; ISI 60*; and the first generation Ping Tour 60*. (Mind you I have ~125 wedges so a lot of other stuff migrates through my bag)
Generally I prefer narrowish soles but the Ping Tours are my favorites because they have a lot of rocker from leading edge to trailing edge. Which does act like a narrow sole, or a significant trailing edge grind.
I like the Cleveland DSG grind, which is VERY narrow with a radically high angle of bounce.
I mostly don't like Vokey or Cleveland because they feel light to me. I attribute this to the "fake" sand pros see all the time. Playing out of river sand is easier with a bit more mass in the head. The weight of the 20-30 wedges I have from the 50s and earlier is astounding--but back then bunkers just had plain old sand in them.
I don't see any wedges with both wide soles and high angles. Even the legendary Hogan Sureout didn't have much bounce, despite its wide sole. I love the look of Cleveland's Recovery Sole, but haven't tried one.
K