The Stuart agraffe couples the strings in a unique vertical application that maintains its straight line, without twisting its directional plane. The agraffe also enables the elimination of the traditional down-bearing force. The diagrams and photos below illustrate the coupling of the string onto the bridge of both the Stuart piano (left) and the modern piano, (right) .
The photos above show the top-down view of the horizontal zig-zag pinning of the modern piano (right) which twists the line of the string, and the bridge agraffe (left) which maintains the line of the string.
The ‘off set’ is the direction in which the stretched music wire is bent and anchored to the bridge/soundboard to determine the speaking length of a note.151
151 Wayne Stuart, email interview with author, 1st February 2012.
