<html> At 10:29 AM 8/8/2005 -0400, Ric Gullion wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>How many year after years are we talking about...how big is the city...how many tuners do you compete with ?????</blockquote> I finished the course in 1980, and slogged through 12 years in Stockton, CA. Then I moved to the Corvallis, Oregon area in 1992. Corvallis is 50,000, Newport is 8700, McMinnville, I'm not sure (Portland outskirts), and Philomath, where I live, is 4,000 at present. Albany is about the size of Corvallis. We have three or four local tuners in the Corvallis area (counting me), many more in Eugene, a few in Salem, three or four get to Newport (one of them lives there now), and McMinnville is practically in the metro Portland area, so there are plenty of tuners there. The Corvallis business built itself a lot faster than the California one. Experience does help, it really does, even if you are starting from scratch all over again. It took me a couple of years to get up to speed on the concert tuning and prep, though the worst of the learning curve took place in the first two concerts! Luckily the Newport folks seemed content to let me get on with it. Susan Kline <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite>Susan Kline <skline@peak.org> wrote: <dl> <dd>Hello, David <dd>I like to think of it as cream rising to the top. A simple process, <dd>which doesn't need hurrying along. If one simply does the work, year after <dd>year, one ends up at the appropriate level, wherever that may be. <dd>Big ads, discounts, elaborate scheduled call backs, etc. ... if one needs <dd>them, <dd>assuming the area isn't absolutely crawling with tuners, something must <dd>be wrong with the work. <dd>Best, <dd>Susan </dl></blockquote></html>