Introduction and story

[Ken Jankura]

     List,  I want to introduce myself and say thank you to all the folks
who share their knowledge, expertise, and humor. I've been lurking for a
year or so, and I enjoy and learn a lot from this forum. My name is Ken
Jankura, and I've been tuning since 1991, self and Guild taught, RPT in
'95, president of the South Central PA chapter last year (I went to the
bathroom at a meeting and when I came back they had elected me). I've had
the pleasure of playing the upright bass for the last two years with the
A440 band at the national conference. Last Fall I had a HUGE influx of new
customers when another tuner burned out and left the area. He was the guy
everybody would call because there just aren't many tuners around here. I
live 2 miles from a town of 200, 6 miles from a town of 6000, 20 miles from
2 towns of 20000, so while there are plenty of pianos around, I have to do
a fair amount of travel to get to them. I'm having a hard time juggling the
amount and quality of non-tuning work I'd like to do for some(most) of my
new customers, and my increasingly very full tuning schedule. There just
doesn't seem to be enough time for shop work anymore.  Having learned and
been tested aurally, I recently bought a SAT (after a particularly painful
episode pitch raising and tuning in an auditorium full of high schoolers
eating lunch) and have been happily learning my way around it. Can't wait
for the SAT III to get here! I have a few questions for Accutuner pros, but
I'll save them for another post. Again, thanks to all, I'm glad to be here.
     I went to tune at a local theatre playhouse last week, they wanted the
performance(?!) Wurlitzer studio tuned for rehearsal, then again for the
show this week. It hadn't been moved to the rehearsal hall, so the stage
manager told me to tune the old upright that was in the corner, instead.
When I lifted the lid I discovered that someone had stapled nine 1-pound
bags of silica gel to the top of the pinblock so that they hung down
against the tuning pins, but could be conveniently swung up onto the top of
the pinblock in the event that the piano ever needed to be tuned :-)  Some
were leaking crystals into the action, so while I didn't end up tuning that
piano, I thought I'd prevent them from causing further damage and just get
them out of there. But where? I  decided I'd just stick them underneath in
the trapwork area, and when I took off the bottom board, there were at
least a dozen down there already! Look out Dampp-Chaser!
    
 Ken Jankura
 Newburg, PA