Since so far sonic and force traps dont seem to have the ability to create higher traps (no force elementals... yet), we need a way to make traps of sufficant power to make them more intresting. My suggestion is as follows: allow us to create traps that are both status and damaging.

For example: Since the magical traps can only be up to level 3, how about creating a Sound Burst trap.
Sonic Burst Trap: 50 sonic trap pieces, 25 Magical trap pieces, 25 s. dragonshards, 10 Sound Burst scrolls.

This trap would produce damage equal to a 3rd level trap (30d6), and would have a chance to stun. This would both allow stronger traps to be made by people who dont have a mage for a friend (dont need soul gems, just butt-loads of magical trap pieces and sound burst scrolls), and it would allow higher levels of traps using sound.

Force is a bit tricker. Force traps dont seem to have any real status spells that i know of. However, you could just go about it another way.

Force Burst trap: 50 force trap pieces, 25 magical trap pieces, 25 S.dragonshards, 10 Chain Magic Missile scrolls.
This would produce a trap simular to a Chain Magic Missile spell; The first enemy to set off the trap would take the 30d6 damage of the trap. If any other enemies were near enough to be hit (based on the area of effect of the trap), they would take the 10 missile hits that the spell usually produces. Basicly, this would be a low target trap where you can hit up to 10 targets, but the trap will do much better damage with only 2 or 3 targets.

As said above, the reason i thought of these traps are two-fold; one you need something that will let these two energy types get to higher levels, and 2, i hate the idea of soul gems that are so hard to get for non-mages, in addition to the difficulty of getting trap pieces in the first place (Really? 2-3 trap pieces per trap, on level 6 quests, as a mechanic, and not all the traps give pieces? really!?). Using scrolls would vastly reduce the difficulty, if not the costs. (You could also use fireball for the fire traps, but that is off subject).

Final note: notice that those traps are not using mechanical pieces. That is because a) magical trap pieces seem to be much harder to get, and b) The status traps use magical pieces anyhow, at least for part of the recipe. Besides, do you want to have to get sonic trap pieces, magical trap pieces, AND mechanical trap pieces, as well as the scrolls?