I've built commercial designs using that approach no problems at all. Most of my crap is built on PCB blanks and I have to spend some time reverse engineering it after I'm done.
I don't follow you. Dead-bug construction over bare copper lies at the very opposite end of the spectrum from solderless breadboarding. The two techniques have nothing in common.
You can use the dead-bug technique at frequencies well beyond 1 GHz with a bit of practice. The solderless breadboard, not so much.
I'm not talking about construction here; design approach. I don't have any schematics for what I'm working on; they get drawn up later when it's all working.
I have to reverse engineer deadbug and Manhattan stuff which is a downside which is my point.
Picture straight off my bench: http://i.imgur.com/AyXNHfX.jpg