Hi Paul, But the tonal difference is audible and (becoming more) measurable. There seem to be two issues here which I need to delineate in my own mind. On one hand, there are those who say that if the agraffe is not making some extraneous noise, then it is "not a bad agraffe" (and therefore, presumably, a good one). But do I read you correctly that you are saying a Revenko'd agraffe will not only be free of the buzzes and sizzles that sometimes occur, but will sound better than an agraffe that has not had the benefit of this treatment? If so, then sign me up for a test drive. Just yesterday, while trying to give some overview of our craft to a promising new apprentice, when he remarked about the level of detail attention in our work, I was reminded that so many of the big differences in piano maintenance are actually comprised of many little things that work together. Hey, like Jim Busby I am fortunate to have work-study student assistance. If you claim and Jim corroborates that polished agraffes contribute to better overall tone, we will try it out. Alan Eder -----Original Message----- From: PAULREVENKOJONES at aol.com To: caut at ptg.org Sent: Thu, Aug 5, 2010 7:51 pm Subject: Re: [CAUT] When to restring... In a message dated 8/5/2010 9:16:52 P.M. Central Daylight Time, tannertuner at bellsouth.net writes: My line of thinking is that as the string is pulled to tension, then subsequently slid back and forth with changes in humidity and tuning motion, it will before the piano can be delivered create the same wire burnished chamfer (is that the word I'm looking for?) into the brass, whether it has been polished or not. In other words, the other 357 degrees of the hole will remain either beautifully dressed or not, but the 1mm of agraffe hole that the string rides in will be the same either way. There are originally, in most cases, two contact points of the wire in the un-radiused agraffe, one tight at the counterbearing side, and the other intermittent in the singing length because of wire bend. Fully radiused, the wire will contact the shape of the radius throughout its excursion through the agraffe. Of course it will bite into the brass under tension, but it's only one contact instead of two. Since manufacturers don't see the cost benefit of bothering with the process, and the newly produced instruments are regarded by artists as as good as exist anywhere, it just seems to be a process that falls into the diminishing rate of returns category. Two categories of judgment which are as questionable for reliability as many others. Further, I can't imagine we ever dress capos to that level of perfection (being cast iron rather than brass), and they would seem more important than the agraffe. Interesting call. But that's my perception. Not that it isn't a good idea that really looks professional when done. If you would hear the difference, you would recognize that this not a cosmetic process. It wouldn't be worth it for that. We've debated this before. I have to say, even of the crappiest agraffes I've pulled out of pianos, tone wasn't necessarily a problem where you could say, "this one sounds like a bad agraffe." It's just another small contribution to the whole, Jeff. I'll say again, as I have many times, I have nothing to gain here by being responsive. We'd be idiots to try to sell something related to this. But the tonal difference is audible and (becoming more) measurable. Paul Jeff -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100807/bca2ed56/attachment-0001.htm>
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