Hi Kurt, Do you find that you were "mis-lead" into this job? It sounds like U of I has gone through a series of technicians over the past several years. As I can see from the job posting, they are looking for a really "green" tech (just three years experience) who is willing to take on this position. Perhaps that is their "in" to pay so low.....? I had the impression that U of I was a good school of music, so what is their downfall in the piano dept.? What, if any, was your shop space and capabilities? I've seen other CAUT jobs, mainly in TX that had absolutely no shop space! I can't imagine a fine music school doing this. Although I can't say I'm afforded a really high salary, I do, however, have a great shop and decent budget. My salary with benefits are about average for CAUT's....so not bad in this economic climate and cost of living here in Lincoln, NE. It could be better for the demands of the job, but somehow, with my budget, I can get one or two major projects done per year that I can't do here...like soundboards,bridges, and refinishing. In shop, I can hang hammers, re-string, action rebuild, and other middle of the road rebuilding all on my own with occasional help from local techs. I have no major facilities to install soundboards or refinish, but since there are so many excellent specialists out there around the country, I find the pianos are in far better shape, in the end, to hire big jobs out, rather than to take the projects on myself, even with proper facilities.....if you know what I mean. Folks that do this stuff for a living know what they are doing....finding the one who is great at it is the "find", and use him/her when you can. Time on a project is another big factor...How much time is involved with these things...again, I ramble, sorry! It sounds like U of I has no interest in keeping a great inventory of keyboard instruments, am I wrong? What they want v. what they need sounds like worlds apart. This is the crutch...No university wants to PAY for outstanding pianos or outstanding technicians, but still INSIST on outstanding instruments! So where do we go from here?? They clearly want a miracle from us day to day and performance to performance, although, frankly: we do it every day! Best to you in your next adventure! Paul T. Williams RPT Piano Technician School of Music 5 Westbrook Bldg. University of Nebraska Lincoln, NE 68588-0100 pwilliams4 at unl.edu From: Kurt Ford <ford_kurt at yahoo.com> To: caut at ptg.org Date: 05/10/2010 11:00 AM Subject: Re: [CAUT] CAUT Digest, Vol 19, Issue 44 Hi Techs, As I'm the one who left the University of Idaho I have been enjoying all of the subsequent posts. The talk of rating techs with a CAUT certification seems a joke to me as a lot of these University's standard's are lower than the RPT. It has been mentioned in the past that we should start rating the universities instead as it is their standards that are too low. I would suggest that we poll the Caut Techs for stats on all of the Universities and put together our own rating system for publication to prospective students and faculty. We could rate them on average age of piano fleet and break that down by performance instruments, teaching instruments, practice pianos for piano majors and general practice room pianos. Budgets for piano replacement and/or rebuilding should be included. The University of Idaho only had 5 practice pianos for 25 piano majors expected to practice 2 to 3 hours a day. Do the math. Lack of good policy allowed the students to practice on the teaching pianos and the Professors to practice on the performance pianos. You can't keep up with this kind of abuse on pianos that average 80 years old Include in that survey the number of pianos for each full time Tech and the salary paid. Someone like Larry Fine should be approached with this idea. The great thing about it is with a web site and email mailings it could be done with little expense. Kurt W. Ford, RPT ford_kurt at yahoo.com. --- On Sun, 5/9/10, caut-request at ptg.org <caut-request at ptg.org> wrote: From: caut-request at ptg.org <caut-request at ptg.org> Subject: CAUT Digest, Vol 19, Issue 44 To: caut at ptg.org Date: Sunday, May 9, 2010, 7:01 PM Send CAUT mailing list submissions to caut at ptg.org To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit http://ptg.org/mailman/listinfo/caut or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to caut-request at ptg.org You can reach the person managing the list at caut-owner at ptg.org When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific than "Re: Contents of CAUT digest..." Today's Topics: 1. Re: selling my customers down the river (Keith Roberts) 2. Pure Sound Wire (Ed Sutton) 3. Re: Preaching to the choir; was University of Idaho Piano Tech Vacancy (Porritt, David) _______________________________________________ CAUT mailing list CAUT at ptg.org http://ptg.org/mailman/listinfo/caut -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100511/46769352/attachment.htm>
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