Stephen, Thanks for your recent informative postings - I took a look at David Breitman's new Graf copy by Regier here (which I have had the pleasure to tune and service a bit - beautiful instrument! - but not had time to really pay attention to certain aspects of before) and noted the key buttons you mentioned. And also the leather bushing under the key fronts. I wonder - can those bushings really last 150 years and not cause problems (squeaking, side-play, whatever) eventually? I've heard about original hammers in an original Graf piano that supposedly still sound good (Penny Crawford at Ann Arbor - do you know her?). Is it possible that leather could have been treated in the tanning process in such a way that it holds up that long without getting hard and dry? Or perhaps if it wears through, the key wood is soft enough that it's not noisy? By the way, yes, the string band IS parallel to the spine all the way into the bass on our Graf. It's a funny instrument . As you say, the workmanship is good but there are oddities - the hammers seem small, and it has modern piano tuning pins (which are on the loose side, or have become loose over the years, which gives it a real "hair trigger" tuning feel, although it can be fairly stable if it's tuned often enough. After my recent blitzkrieg of attention, it's really not too bad an instrument. David is using it in a historical performance class and so for several students this is literally their first exposure to a fortepiano. Anyway, cheers - Allen Wright Oberlin College
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