Advice on Apprenticing in SW Florida

[Keith Roberts]

David,
    I was in the same position awhile back. My best advice? Learn how to beg
without groveling. <G>
    Seriously, the contacts you make at the guild meetings are your best
bets. Brown nose a little and let your intentions be known. I found most of
the techs to be very helpful in showing procedures and what not. Their
concerns are:
    You will steal their clients.   A lot of times clients think they can
get a better deal by dealing directly with you particularly when tuning and
make enticing offers. For tuning, run your own ad at a competitive price.
With a SATIII you're delivering a product that is better than most clients
are use to. Might take a little longer but you can get there. Get as much
tuning hammer technique as you can. Tune, tune, tune.
    You will go into competition against them.......Find out what they hate
to do or would rather not do. A lot of techs specialize and have peripheral
work. The guy I found hates dampers and hanging hammers. Plus his main
person on the job moved. His love is the belly work and he has enough of
that, so he could use someone to regulate actions. I'm learning about as
fast as I can. I like to think I'm in competition with him, not against
him.. Teamwork. When what's happening is over my head I sweep the shop and
sometimes I get to finish doing that before something is found for me to do.
That helps me stay around. I was about ready to show up and make myself a
minor nuisance hoping they'd put me to work so I couldn't bother them.
Really I was lucky, the need was there and I was asking for it. I got a lot
more than I thought I had bargained for. Part time works great and can be
very flexible. Be sure to include an adjustment when your worth to the team
is established. This works both ways.
Good luck to you. I drive an hour+  one way for this mental thrashing and I
think it's worth it.

Keith Roberts
Associate





----- Original Message -----
From: "David Smith" <dsmith941@hotmail.com>
To: <pianotech@ptg.org>
Sent: Saturday, July 13, 2002 9:32 AM
Subject: Advice on Apprenticing in SW Florida


> 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
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos:
> http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx
>
>
>