<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"> <HTML><HEAD> <META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII"> <META content="MSHTML 6.00.5730.11" name=GENERATOR></HEAD> <BODY id=role_body style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; COLOR: #000000; FONT-FAMILY: Arial" bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 topMargin=7 rightMargin=7><FONT id=role_document face=Arial color=#000000 size=2> <DIV>I have a customer with a beautiful Sohmer console from the 1960's, a model 34-96 I believe. He complained </DIV> <DIV>of an echo. When I got there I loosened the nut on the damper pedal and it went away.</DIV> <DIV>A few weeks later, he called me with the same problem. I was baffled. What could possibly be causing</DIV> <DIV>the lost motion to DECREASE in a pedal? It's always the other way around. When I inspected the trap work closely, I found the answer. The heavy spring on which the trap lever pivots, shaped like a Sigma, that connects the trap lever to the piano's floor was slowly breaking from metal fatigue! And as it was coming apart, the top part of the spring was coming up from the bottom part of the spring, thus pushing the pedal rod up, and lifting the dampers off the strings! Has anybody out there ever seen this problem?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Jesse Gitnik</DIV> <DIV>NYC</DIV> <DIV>In business since 1980</DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>