> Why then not make a agraffe out of steel or some other harder material? > That may be difficult for the one-off small-shop piano builder, but if > there were a demand to others..... Why would this be so difficult? Why > would brass persist so long? Cost? Ease of machining? > Why not use other termination types like a capo-type bar in all string > sections like you see on cheap old American microgrands? What about > something more like an upright pressure bar arrangement? Actually, it looks to me to be quite possible to retrofit an agraffed piano with a termination bar of harder material than the brass agraffe, along the agraffe line, with a pressure bar behind, screwed into the plate. A cast stepped bar would be ideal for matching speaking lengths within the unison, but I'm curious how well a curved bar would work. Just how critical are slightly mismatched speaking lengths within unisons at those string lengths? I'd guess there is some tolerance. Ron N
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