At 07:50 -0500 16/11/2010, Terry Farrell wrote: >...Surely, NO piano without agraffes in the bass and tenor could >EVER sound nice! And of course, NO piano that doesn't have at least >a four-section plate/string-scale could EVER sound good! What fun >proving people wrong! Yes indeed, but I have always asked myself why they bothered with agraffes there at all. It slows down the stringing process and costs more money, time and labour. The old Bösendorfer Viennese grands had a heavy, removable iron 'capo' in the treble and the rest was done like this but using only a half-round bridge bar instead of the heavier version like Del's, which is identical in conception to the design I have in mind for my next prototype. No doubt the lighter bridge-bar ( I call them that because that's their function on a grand even if they're the same as a pressure-bar on an upright) will sound fine, but the rigidity of the heavier front bridge and the positioning legs make it preferable and also visually far more serious. If makers had discovered that a super-massive and perfectly rigid front bridge improved the tone below a certain point in the scale then they would all have switched from agraffes to an all-through cast-in bridge (as on many cheapish baby grands) or a more massive arrangement of some kind like this. The fact is that the agraffe is adequate, but it is also expensive. The heavy bronze or brass front bridge can be produced cheaply as a casting, saves a considerable amount of drilling tapping and threading-through and does a job that is bound to be as good as the agraffe and a lot better in theory even if the theory is inaudible. It has the additional advantages that it looks good and businesslike, can be polished if necessary far more easily than agraffes and can be refaced at the apex where it matters to get the optimum termination. JD
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