Imagine the pleasure/terror of sitting in the chair for hours having them installed.
Although I realise it's not directly related either to the topic or to the point you make, I can confirm that "long appointments" were certainly a terrifying prospect. But once one was in the chair, terror was soon replaced by an overwhelming sense of proctalgia.
The cleaning, sizing, biting down on the stick, having each taken off for repeated resizing, adjustment and refitting, recleaning, cementing, biting down, waiting, cleaning excess cement ... and eventually fitting the archwire and tying it all together with wire ligatures.
I've seen pictures of fully banded braces where elastic ligatures are used, but that certainly wasn't an option when mine were done in the mid-70s. There's a picture floating around somewhere of an open mouth with dozens of wires sticking out waiting to be snipped and tucked. That's exactly how my ortho did it. That was also something that took quite a bit of time.
The whole thing went on for hours. In my case, the two arches were done over two appointments, probably because it was all done by the orthodontist himself, and he also needed lunch breaks.
Once fitted (and more on topic in respect of intimacy), I don't think banded braces were any worse than directly bonded brackets except perhaps for two things. One was flossing -- they shredded floss. The other thing was the little cleats on the lingual surfaces that were sometimes used as attachment points. They looked innocuous enough, but they shredded tongues.
Happy days indeed!
