[CAUT] Agraffe alignment

[David Porritt]

Jeff:

 

I just worked on a D this week doing the string leveling, mating hammers to
strings etc. and the agraffes were perpendicular to the string line, but the
holes had been drilled in the plate not perpendicular.  As I put my level on
the strings and saw that they were a half-bubble off (kind of like me!) then
I put the level on the agraffe and the top was a half-bubble off.  That
whole section was that way like the plate was not level when it was drilled.
In the piano the stretcher, plate, keybed etc. were all level just the tops
of the agraffes in that section.  That made the job a little more time
consuming.

 

dave

 

____________________

David M. Porritt, RPT

dporritt at smu.edu

  _____  

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Jeff
Tanner
Sent: Friday, March 16, 2007 3:39 PM
To: College and University Technicians
Subject: [CAUT] Agraffe alignment

 

Some months back, someone (Kent Swafford maybe?) posted a picture of
Steinway agraffes all out of alignment. I don't remember the entire ensuing
discussion, but my recollection is that there was a consensus that it was
definitely taboo. I just had an experience this week that gave me reason to
think there might have been some rational reason for it.

 

I tuned a Kawai RX-2 in a customer's home which had an obnoxious buzz in the
left string of B27 at the agraffe -- the first unison in the low tenor and
the first plain wire triple unison. I worked and worked with a string lifter
and a screwdriver and the buzz would subside a bit, but soon came right back
as obnoxiously as before. Without access to a supply of Kawai compatible
agraffes and not particularly wanting to deal with the consequences of
restringing those two unisons, I decided to nudge the agraffe just a bit
tighter in its hole.

 

That put the agraffe just a bit out of true alignment, but not badly enough
to significantly distort the tunability of the unison (or the functionality
of the damper), but gave the wire just enough of a fresh point of contact in
the agraffe hole to eliminate the buzz. It was actually that email post with
that picture of the nasty looking Steinway agraffe alignment that gave me
the idea.

 

I've seen some pretty rough agraffes coming out of Steinways from the late
60s and early 70s. I wonder now if maybe those agraffes had been turned to
help with buzzing or other noises I've heard from Steinway agraffes from
that era - just maybe the buzzes trumped the tuning consequences?

 

Jeff

 

Jeff Tanner, RPT

University of South Carolina

 





 

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