agraffes

[Ron Nossaman]

>-I know this sounds strange, but the string spacing changed enough to affect
>the dampers. When I straightened the dozen or so agraffes that were
>obviously out of line, the trichord damper felt no longer did it's job
>properly and had to be adjusted, to get reasonable damping. The agraffes are
>obviously not as tight as they could be.

Oh, ok, I get it. The assumption that the misalignment was done 
intentionally for damper function confused me. I doubt that happened, but 
that the damper installer just worked with what he found when the piano got 
to his station. Of course, I could be wrong...

I found loose agraffes like this on a piano I've tuned for over ten years 
since. I didn't know if they would become troublesome if left alone, so I 
decided to find out. Since the piano had already been purchased and had 
been used in a church for a couple of years before I saw it, I saw no 
problem with using it for educational purposes. Those loose agraffes have 
been no problem whatsoever that I could tell. No odd noises, obvious tone 
differences or tuning disconfrugalties beyond those found in the rest of 
the piano. A couple of octaves or more higher in the scale, I'd expect a 
loose agraffe to be more of a potential tone problem, but down in the 
bottom half of the scale, I can't tell the loose ones in that piano by 
listening.


>-There are two agraffes on this piano that would be properly in line with
>the rest of the set if they were turned slightly in a clockwise fashion. The
>strings on both of these agraffes, when checked with a bubble gauge, are
>higher on the left side then the right by a small amount. I had levelled all
>the other strings and gang levelled hammers mated up well, except for these
>two unturnable agraffes.
>Owen G.

I see. The obvious options are to either take the strings off and 
reposition the agraffe, and/or just level the strings and press on.

Ron N