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>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC