JPF Home Page Forums Musician Gear and Techniques Keyboard and Piano Forum Clavinova sustain won't go away

Can anybody help me? I bought an old Clavinova CVP8 at pawn shop for $100.00 a few years ago and thought "what a great deal!" I played it at the shop and the only thing wrong with it was the sustain was on with no visible way to turn it off. The pedals were missing so I thought maybe I just needed to have the sustain pedal plugged in to make it go off. My first hurdle was that Yamaha says the pedals are no longer available. I tried pluging in an aftermarket and a roland pedal with no change. Would finding the correct yamaha pedals solve the problem? Or is there another way to permanently disable the sustain? Its bsically useless as is!

Kurt

Hi,

You probably know as much as I do. The sustain pedal is nothing more than an on/off switch. Your question sparked my curiosity, so I went and got one of my Yamaha pedals and a multi-tester to check continuity. I was surprised.

I would have guessed that depressing the pedal would close the circuit, but it didn't. The circuit is constantly closed and the pedal breaks it. So, sustain is continuously off until pedal is depressed.

This leads me to the next thought. When the pedal plug is out, the connection inside the jack is closed, keeping the sustain off. Insertion of the plug opens that connection, but the one in the pedal is closed and the circuit remains intact and sustain is off. So no pedal or pedal not depressed, you have a closed circuit and sustain is off.

I am no repairman of these instruments, but I'm left with two thoughts. Either there a problem on the circuit board or, if you're lucky, somehow the wire that connects to the jack inside the instrument has broken away. This would leave the circuit open and sustain on.

It may be worth your trouble to open the case and look around that jack.

It just surprised me when I discovered that sustain is always off with closed circuit. Depression of the pedal actually breaks or opens the circuit and turns on the sustain. And the absence of a pedal plug in the jack leaves the internal jack spring contact closed.

???

[This message has been edited by Sonar_5 (edited 10-28-2006).]

I know this is petty and has nothing to do with the topic at hand.....but this is my obsessive personality....

petal = part of a flower
pedal = thing you put your foot on

I know I'm a pain in the butt, you don't have to tell me!

Good luck with the sustain pedal problem! --Jean

JL,

Last time I had a pain in the butt, I got some Prepar.... :-)

Think not that I am one of those who is too proud to be corrected. My brain must've been out to lunch on that one and the buffet was closed.

Thanks for the correction.

Kitchensmith,

If you swing back by this thread, I'd sure like to know what happened with your dilemma.

Thanks.

I tried everything I could think of (I know a little about electronics but not a lot) and then I got on the Yamaha site and found a repairman! It turns out there is a good tech here in town called Musicians Electronics, he's got a nice old Bandmaster and some Fenders and after we jammed on some old surf music together for a while, he helped me pack it into his shop. He seemed pretty confident that he would have it fixed in short order, I'll let youo know when I get it back! Interestingly, I told him I had a super reverb amp from the 70's that I wanted to bring in to get the tremolo fixed and working, and he said all I needed to do was plug a pedal in. He was right......

And finally, after a lot of head scratching and several calls to Yamaha, then painstakingly tracing each cuircuit with his tester,he found that a coil was broken off of the circuit board that had the pedal outlet jack on it, thus breaking the circuit and making the sustain stay on. Clavinova works great now!