I think that I can help John Tuttle with the mystery pallets on the
Half Duo-Art that he mentioned in yesterday's MMD.

Aeolian would always make their foot-pumped systems so that if you were
to raise the Accompaniment level to the highest point, it would auto-
matically turn on the Theme, but only at that point.  There cannot be a
pallet like this on electric Duo-Arts, although the electrics do have a
different pallet on them.  On these pianos, when the Theme gets to its
highest level, a pallet is turned on to allow a larger volume of air to
flow through the mechanism, so that crashing chords will sound better.

Getting back to John's question, the reason there is a pallet valve on
the soft pedal is that, regardless of whether the piano is manual or
electric, the softest chords will miss when the soft pedal is activa-
ted.  I am pretty sure that the pallet here goes to the second Accompa-
niment level, although the owner can easily change this if he wants.

There is one more type of soft pedal control that I have found only on
the Steinway and Weber Uprights that were foot pumped.  I call this the
"Analog Temponamic Soft Pedal," and it is too complicated to try to do
justice to this ingenious mechanism here.  Fortunately, I have a Stein-
way Upright with this mechanism, and I will write a separate article
about this thing, and include photos also.

Randolph Herr