[pianotech] Capo Bars

[Ron Nossaman]

pianoguru at cox.net wrote:
> As others have said, very few manufacturers harden the capo
> bar.  None of the manufacturers for whom I have worked have
> done so.  My only experience with hard terminations were
> the Baldwin SD-10 and SF-10.  These had very hard
> termination pieces.  I suspect that the only reason that
> they did not have severe problems with string breakage as a
> consequence of the extremely hard material is that they had
> an unusually large radius at both contact points with the
> strings.
> 
> There were some good aspects of the design.  The
> termination pieces provided a bridge between each note,
> connecting the capo and the main mass of the plate.  This
> provided a very rigid termination.
> 
> I never cared for what the termination piece did to the
> sound, whether the problem was the extreme hardness, the
> large radius, or some other variable.  

It was, and is, the long duplex segment. Shorten that, and the 
termination noises vanish.


>There is a reason
> why so few harden the capo, and it is not because they are
> too cheap.  Call me an old-fogy, but for my money,
> hardening the capo does more harm than good.
> 
> Frank Emerson

Ron N