Sorry to come into this thread late....looks like everything has been covered.
To recap...
There will be resistance on the caps as you push them in. All bars are shipped with a set resistance. If you are finding yourself using an "extreme" amount of force then the spacing of the fingers have been set wrong and we will gladly reset them for you if you send them back to me. This applies to the bars made to hold the schoeps actives.
Running the actives for over 5 years, I have never had the grey finish come off the metal assembly. It will start to show wear but the fusion between the matte gray paint and the metal is pretty resilient.
Lil' Kim is right on his procedure. The Nuemann cable is considerable thinner than the Schoeps cable and on the A20(S) you need to bundle them together. On the Schoeps cable, I find it easier to route the cable through the A20(S) cable clamp *before* you insert the cap into the kwonbar.
Now get out and tape!