>(based on that characteristic alone - I realize that often the three > section plate is accompanied with no framing, thin rim, and the name > Brambach stamped on the plate). Stamped?! Those decals are positively modern looking. I've seen little four section Brambachs with agraffes, I think scale 3's and not the ones with full perimeter plates - maybe even with a backpost. I scrapped what seemed to be a late 2 a couple weeks ago next to a "Hallet & Davis", by far the Brambach was a superior instrument...so there. There is in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts collection a Hallet & Davis grand with pressure bars in the lower section (or sections), capo the rest. Koster associates the instrument with L.H. Browne's 1851 patent (US.8383: if so, it's much mutated, since Browne claims an auxiliary lower plate, and a sound board tensioner neither of which are present, the action's backwards but the capo is integral to the main plate); if the BMFA pianner's anything like one I have handy (ser.nr.10593: same dimensions, repetition action but all agraffes, longer tenor scaling), cost probably was not the issue here since the outer rim is solid Walnut, with the bent side sawn - not the most frugal use of materials I think but who knows. A laminated inner rim cap locks the plate in the case. (Wasn't it they who used pressure bars in the treble bridges on squares?) Cristofori's later design might be classified as a capo, but it's strung below the wrest plank. It's suggested that more normally configured pinned nuts imposed a sort of dynamic limitation to grands, possibly one reason for ventures with down strikers and tipped over uprights (my current favorite); however, Hardman seem to have preferred wooden nuts in uprights through the first quarter of the 20th century (higher tension, and especially the strings being struck toward the nut at least bypasses that limitation). Early Broadwood/Erard type agraffes literally are staples (yikes! vs. our screwed in studs), interesting that the mid-19th Pleyel and Erards on display at the Cité de la musique I think all have capo bars (aside the Papes, the 1790s Taskin with duplex scaling was a great thing). Earliest domestic capo bar I've seen on paper is Bossert and Schomacker's and which is pinned (US.2595). One of my Hallet, Davis et al. twin uprights has counterbearing agraffes with individual little triangular brass terminations in the bass (George Davis, ser.nr.21546; loads of name changes for these guys), and there's always Chickerings upside down half agraffes. A Collard I've seen has pierced brass plates screwed to the wrest plank. Cheers, Clark
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