The 'creek' that won't go away

[Phil Bondi]

I had one today that I thought I'd share here.

A 1920 Marshall And Wendell Upright.

Everytime the damper pedal would make its way back to its 'rest' position',
you could hear a 'creek' coming from somewhere.

The linkage involved to make the dampers lift are pretty typical for an
upright of this vintage..nothing fancy..very functional.

The customer's previous tech told her that he could not fix the problem, but
did not tell her what the problem was. Today, I believe I found the problem,
and it doesn't involve any linkage with the damper pedal system.

What I did today was take it all apart..replaced the leaf spring..applied
Teflon to the rod guides(there are 2 of them on the bottom board), and added
Teflon to the wooden rod guide that is attached to the inside wall of the
side panel..removed old felt from the top of the wooden rod and replaced it
with a new piece(possible 'creek' source, but not)..pulled the action, and
lubricated the damper lift rod thingees(there were 4 of them)..now I knew
that the 'creek' wasn't coming from these thingees, but what the heck..I was
going this far, I might as well go all the way.

Still stumped as to where the 'creek' is coming from?

Remember..the 'creek' only happened when the damper pedal was going back to
its rest position..why this 'creek' didn't 'creek' when the pedal was
engaging the dampers is beyond me, but I still feel the problem was
found..but not fully understood why.

Your mission, is to try and figure out where the 'creek' is coming from and

why it only happened when the pedal was on its way back to rest.

The 'creek' was not coming from any part of the damper pedal linkage and

There is a DC installed..noise is not coming from there..but that's your
only hint.

have fun,
Phil