The Pandalon has been sitting for a while, as I've been absorbed in other projects and activities, but as usual, the delay has been productive: things have been "simmering" in the back of my mind, and I think I have some ideas on how to do various things better than I was planning before.
Most significantly, I think I am not going to attempt to build this complex two-stage, single-pedal, machine pedal system. Instead, as originally planned, I will use the simpler method of controlling each of the two machine rails with a separate pedal. So there will be three pedals total: machine-1, machine-2, and sustain. And three bicycle cables, instead of two, but they are cheap and readily-available. With the two machine pedals, it'll still be possible to get all the effects of the single two-stage pedal, plus of course more flexibility. Since some of the stops are "buzzy" or harmonics-adding, and some are muffling in nature, there will be a general tendency to have two separate types of effect that may be wanted, two axes of sonic change which may not benefit by being forced onto the same continuum. In any case, once the system is fitted for three pedals, it'll be easy enough to add the two-stage behaviour as an option, through modifications only to the pedal unit itself.
So that's all the explanation for why it "doesn't hurt" to go back to double machine pedals, but the actual *reason* is that the forces and frictions, at least the way my current stops action is designed, will work out much better this way. The two-stage mechanism requires another layer of friction and spring force on top of the two "pulls" themselves. The pulls already have tons of force, but I think they will operate smoothly and with a good feel, once directly connected to pedals with the right leverage. I was having doubts about how clunky and noisy and possibly even squeaky the two-stage mechanism might be. I had re-designed it several different ways, but nothing was quite sitting right about it, in my head.
The critical thing here is to have pedals which can be operated quickly and easily, without undue noise and without too "indirect" of a feel, even though the mechanism is totally indirect. My model for the kind of pedal-use I want to support, is the virtuoso hammer-dulcimer players of the Eastern Block: they often have a damper pedal, which operates a simple pull-down damper on all the strings (i.e., normally-undamped). They use this damper very quickly to accent and mute different parts of phrases, and there also seems to be a considerable linear range to the response of the damper, so they are able to obtain a range of tone colour from light damping (a change in harmonics but still with sustain) to very percussive highly-damped "plunks". I want my buff stop to be able to do all of this, so that it can be used in exactly the same way. I think the double pedals will enable this much more readily.
