Hi Frank Nice posting and I thank you for it. I personally like it when folks provide a bit of straightforward reasoning to explain their perspectives on matters. Their seems to be a point of contention relative to the <<performance>> of agraffes visa vi pressure bar solutions in uprights in the discussion so far. I'm not sure what each party actually means by <<performance>> but certainly in many if not the greatest majority of pianos I have to either restring or change a single string on the agraffe presents the easiest to deal with solution by and large. I run into a lot of pressure bar instruments where you have to really struggle to get a broken string through the termination and counterbearing, and then get the bend into the darned pinhole. Never run into this with agraffed uprights. And, they do have the nice habit of making sure the strings are correctly aligned.... assuming the agraffes themselves are correctly placed. Granted this is not usually a concern in anycase... but when it is, its always in a non agraffe instrument. That said... I have yet to hear any real reasoning as to the differences between the two solutions concerning acoustic related performance issues, and would sorely like to hear some. Strikes me that whatever differences there may be... there are certainly many instruments with agraffes that sound and bear up over time quite as nicely as any without. I would also be very interested in hearing more on the different configurations of the <<six variables>> you mentioned in your post.. and exactly what those six variables consisted of. Cheers RicB
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