<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><BR><DIV><DIV>On Apr 16, 2007, at 3:45 PM, Ken Zahringer wrote:</DIV><BR class="Apple-interchange-newline"><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite"><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; "><FONT face="Garamond"><SPAN style="font-size:14.0px; font-family: Garamond; "><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14px; ">Wayne Stuart uses a device he calls a “bridge agraffe”. ...</SPAN><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14px; ">in fact Sohmer used these devices many years ago. I suppose it didn’t catch on then because other manufacturers saw it as “their” idea, not “ours”. With modern manufacturing techniques, surely they would be less expensive than the labor-intensive process of drilling, notching, and pinning a bridge, and would seem to offer a better termination as well....</SPAN><SPAN class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Garamond; font-size: 14px; ">Does anyone have any experience with these agraffes? Is there a downside to them that I don’t know about, other than inertia in ideas of how a piano is supposed to look? </SPAN></SPAN></FONT></SPAN></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR><DIV>I tune a couple or three old Sohmers around town with the bridge agraffes. One was restrung by someone else (now deceased) - and not everything is like I would have done it :-). The others are all original (and yes, all pre-1920). It is difficult to say whether I particularly like what I hear. The rebuilt one has rock hard hammers that are difficult to voice and we really don't focus on it as if it were a performance venue instrument. It's in a country church 20 miles out of town. But the musicians there are quite competent (one is on staff here at the school of music), and they love the piano. There are a lot of metallic sounds in there that disappear when you get in the top section that doesn't have agraffes. The top section - with standard bridge pins - is quite nice actually. They also improve some if you can get a needle in the hammer any depth at all. But there is also either falseness or otherwise difficult to tune out noise in many of the agraffed unisons. I'm guessing the rebuilder was not likely to have known to dress those old agraffes before he restrung it. Whether or not that would have made much difference is difficult to know. I believe the bridge agraffes also have "upbearing" rather than downbearing. Perhaps it is because the soundboard is 90 plus years old, but the tuning on that old piano stays rock solid.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>The other couple of similar Sohmers here in town had very similar tones through the bridge agraffe range, even with 80, 90 plus year old hammers and strings.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Looking to the violin for clues that obviously inspired piano design, I suppose if a metal bridge termination would produce desirable tone, the violin would have moved to that years ago. But they'd rather have a piece of quartersewn maple that's been sitting in a garage for 50 years shaved down as a string termination.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>I think there may be something to the statement someone made earlier about those false sounds creating desirable piano tone, and it is something I noticed not long after I began here almost 9 years ago. Of the two Steinways we have here, both finished within a couple hundred numbers of each other, the one everybody likes is the one with the most "falseness" in the singles, though they don't realize it is there. Even with the new hammers, much more mellow yet than the originals, it has more "color".</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>