Hi Ron and others, Thanks for all the responses. You asked for my opinion on the topic, so here it is: I can think of no configuration with agraffes that would improve, and not degrade, the high treble sections, as opposed to the pressure bar, although I have considered a combination of half-agraffes with the pressure bar. I do like agraffes in the bass and tenor sections. The bi-chord unisons would benefit the most from agraffes, since it makes equal string lengths within each unison more achievable. I also like the half-agraffes (top cut off), for ease in (re)stringing. My only reservation about half agraffes is in the lowest few notes of the piano. It is often not possible to avoid considerable side bear coming from the agraffe or agraffe pin to the tuning pin for these few lowest notes of the piano. I don't trust a half-agraffe to be adequate to deal with the side bearing for these few notes. I take enough time to insure that the tuning pin alignment is such that string spacing should not be a problem, and therefore not a significant benefit from agraffes. I am still mulling it over, and have not decided exactly how to deal with these issues, but I'll let you know when I have a final configuration for my next upright design. Frank Emerson pianoguru at earthlink.net
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