Advice on Apprenticing in SW Florida

[David Smith]

Would anyone be able to give me advice on how to apprentice myself with a 
highly reputable and competent piano technician in SW Florida?  I am 
hesitant to just cold-call technicians in the area because I don't know 
them.

I have wanted to do this for many years, and have recently retired and am 
living for the next 4 or so years near Ft Myers, FL.  I am about 1/3-1/2 way 
through the Randy Potter course, am learning aural tuning, have a SAT III 
and am tuning my own pianos with it, while practising repair and regulation 
on an old upright.  I have tuned 25 pianos in the last 6 months, (actually 3 
pianos several times -- detuning them before the next tuning session).  I am 
finding that the SAT III device is a great help in learning aural tuning, as 
it gives me a consistent benchmark to shoot for and check against.  Also 
took some tuning tutoring and went to lots of technical session in Chicago, 
which was great inspiration for me at this point.

Would really like to learn from a good technician/ teacher first hand and in 
return would do work for them at very reasonable rates.

Is the apprentice approach still a viable and useful approach both for the 
apprentice and the master in these modern days.  It seems to be that it 
would be, but I am hesitant to take the next step.

Thanks in advance for any feedback and advice, except for that on my 
spelling and grammar (g).

Dave Smith
Pine Island Florida
PTG Associate Member


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