I have found this discussion to be interesting as well. I am now only one year into being the technician here. I have had the opportunities to have two other careers, but pianos and music has always been an active part of my life either as a full time tuner/technician, hobby, or avocation. Through unfortunate circumstances the previous technician here at SIU , Larry Reynolds, met an untimely and early death from a car accident on the way to a private client's piano. Larry and I started tuning in this area of Southern Illinois in the mid-1970's. I moved to the Houston/Galveston area in 1979 and returned to Southern Illinois just after Larry assumed the position here at the university. After his accident, I did some contract work for the university and then decided to "retire" from my other career and move to this position. And, I am now 60 years of youthful age and expect to go the duration. I have mentored my son and he works with me rebuilding pianos for private clients and learning all he can in the process. He is experiencing so much in the college and private aspects of the business that I wish I had had those early opportunities with good pianos. It does take some mental fortitude to tune four or so Kimball, Whitney, Stark, pianos and psyche up for the next day knowing you are going to see the similar pianos again. I joke and tell people I moved from this area just to get away from Kimball pianos. Now, fortunately, I can somewhat control my environment here at the university which makes it easier to deal with the challenges of private clients pianos. See attachments of old bridge pin/repair that my son and I encountered. It was a good learning experience for him and a challenge to both of us. This was an old 1930's studio vertical and not a Yamaha S6 or C3 as the attachment might suggest. Those are other projects. I look forward to meeting each of you as the opportunity presents. Best regards to you all, and thanks to those members of the PTG that I have learned from and contimue to do so directly or indirectly from journal articles and etc. I have always found piano people have such kindness and a willingness to share their expertise, from the tuner I remember tuning my piano as a child who gave me mutes, tuning fork, and a red nylon tuning hammer as well as some instruction and encouragement to y'all Henry Nicolaides Piano Technician, School of Music Southern Illinois University 1000 S Normal Avenue Carbondale, Illinois 62901 email: henryn at siu.edu > Date: Tue, 3 Nov 2009 08:17:29 -0800 > To: caut at ptg.org > From: skline at peak.org > Subject: [CAUT] pin drop -- thanks > > I'd like to thank everyone who took part in the "pin drop" informal survey. > > I found it a very interesting and reassuring thread, especially the fact > that so many of you are in your forties or fifties instead of mid-sixties, > and also that the two schools have been graduating eager young people. > > That was very interesting about Tom Winter sharing a position with > a novice, and about experienced people sharing a university job, > instead of slogging away all alone. Steve Brady did this with > Susan Willanger at UW, and it always seemed an eminently sensible > approach to preventing burnout and keeping a private clientele. > A private clientele built up over years I feel is a real safety > factor, especially if one might someday be faced with getting > fired (as a surprising number of us are now and then.) Plus > the variety of private clients, and the sociability, and > especially the absence of campus politics and governance would be > a nice break from unrelieved full time institutional work. > > I will take it as given that once I hang up the tuning hammer, someone > will somehow appear. If I'm still around and kicking by then, I might > inform the major schools. Of course, maybe I'll be tuning away and > drop dead. I believe Ted Sambell once said, "they'll have to scrape > me off the keyboard." <smile> Sure beats hanging on in some miserable > hospital or old folks home. > > Susan Kline, RPT > > > _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail: Trusted email with powerful SPAM protection. http://clk.atdmt.com/GBL/go/177141665/direct/01/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091103/5d2a25e4/attachment-0001.htm> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Y S6 and C3, Nail Bridge Pins 005.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 2089062 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20091103/5d2a25e4/attachment-0003.jpg> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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