Pilgram's Progress, (was electric)

[Jon Page]

At 06:24 AM 01/06/2001 -0500, you wrote:
>    Ok, so we have several different slants on this, so far,  and while the
>tribe is gathered round striking matches to give me a hot-foote,  what about
>others?  Am I the only one that wanted to specialize, even to the exclusion
>of the smallest, least costly pianos?
>Regards to all,
>Ed Foote RPT
>

I'm with ya Ed,
I gave up tuning verticals many years before I drastically curtailed my 
grand tunings.
Tuning uprights was causing shoulder and neck discomfort, grands are not so bad
but I eventually referred all my customers to various tuners in the area to 
concentrate
on shop work.

It paid off because soon the tuners were sending me repair work since they 
only want to tune.
And their customers got to know that I specialize in repair work, not 
tuning.  Occasionally I
still get a call to tune and immediately refer them to an appropriate tuner 
for their area and piano.

Another reason for discontinuing field tunings is that the customers did 
not want to improve
their pianos. My suggestions for maintenance were met with, "It plays well 
enough for me,
I just want to keep it tuned".   Since I wanted to do technical maintenance 
I did not see a point
in maintaining a customer who did not want my full services, they were 
taking time away from
those who did and my shop time.

And a few called for a tuning and I get there and the piano had been 
refinished and restrung.
They said they had it done in Boston and thought that I was "just a 
tuner".  That really frosted
my pipes.  Especially after I repeatedly prompted them for repairs.  Now I 
am not referred to as
Jon Page, the piano tuner but Jon Page the piano technician by these same 
people.

Some people prefer to run about tuning pianos and affecting minor repairs. 
I prefer projects.
Big projects. Working in the shop.

So I guess the jist of all this rambling is that I aspired to something 
other than a full-time tuner.

Whatever floats your boat.


Jon Page,   piano technician
Harwich Port, Cape Cod, Mass.
mailto:jonpage@mediaone.net
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