<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; ">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.<DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>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.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>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.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>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?</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Jeff</DIV><BR><BR><DIV> <SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 0px 0px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; text-align: auto; -khtml-text-decorations-in-effect: none; text-indent: 0px; -apple-text-size-adjust: auto; text-transform: none; orphans: 2; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; "><DIV>Jeff Tanner, RPT</DIV><DIV>University of South Carolina</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"></SPAN> </DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>