learner with some questions

[Dean May]

>>As someone else said, it is very good experience to tune for a local
piano 
dealer. They can often be tolerant of you being slow (who cares how long
it 
takes you to do that $15 floor tuning?) and perfection is not mandatory.

Very good advice. That is what I did starting out and the benefit was
huge. I was stuck mainly tuning the lower end pianos and sprucing up the
junky trade-ins while the "regular" tuner prepped the higher end pianos.
But that was the best experience for me. It gave me a wide range of
experience dealing with all kinds of repair problems with lots of
different brands. And anything I did to these trade-ins was an
improvement so I couldn't go wrong. Within a couple of years I had
effectively displaced the "regular" tuner by simply being reliable,
combing my hair (the other guy was one of those weird musician types)
and charging a fair price. The guy would regularly not show up to
appointments for the free first tunings. Every time he did that the
store would ask me to take care of this upset customer and I would do
the tuning within 2-3 days. It didn't take too long before I was getting
all of the free tuning appointments. Store managers don't like unhappy
customers. 

Dean
Dean May             cell 812.239.3359
PianoRebuilders.com   812.235.5272
Terre Haute IN  47802


-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On
Behalf Of Farrell
Sent: Friday, August 05, 2005 8:11 PM
To: Pianotech
Subject: Re: learner with some questions

Thousand shmousand - well, maybe some are slower learners than others,
but 
the bottom line is to be able to produce a decently tuned piano - pretty

clean unisons (as the piano allows) and the rest where nothing stands
out - 
within maybe two hours or so. IMHO, after a few months of practicing
tuning 
principles, and then doing full tunings on a few dozen pianos, you might
be 
at that point.

I did the Potter course in about three or four months, practiced
principles 
during that time, continued practice for a couple more months and I
don't 
think I did more than a couple dozen full tunings before I hung out my
sign 
and started tuning for pay.

As someone else said, it is very good experience to tune for a local
piano 
dealer. They can often be tolerant of you being slow (who cares how long
it 
takes you to do that $15 floor tuning?) and perfection is not mandatory.

I recommend picking your first clients carefully - tune spinets for
little 
old ladies that are hard of hearing. Seriously - just don't tune a 
professional pianist's nice Bosendorfer when you first start out. Know
what 
I mean?

I also would not volunteer any information about your experience level.
If 
they ask, of course, be honest. But not very many folks ask. Charge
whatever 
you think the going rate is - you'll be making less because it will take
you 
longer. And if a piano takes you 2-1/2 hours to tune and the owner says
"it 
only took the last guy 45 minutes to tune the piano", you can just make
some 
comment like "I prefer to take the time necessary to give my clients a 
quality tuning" or somesuch.

Do the course, practice, do a few dozen free tunings for friends and
then go 
tune like a pro - because at that point you will be one!

Terry Farrell


> <<Also, is there some kind of consensus as to how many pianos a person
has 
> to tune before they are ready for the real world? >>
>
> About 1,000 on average.
>
> Terry Peterson 


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