piano service in music colleges

[FSSturm@aol.com]

I have been the sole technician at the University of New Mexico for over ten
years now. We have about 70 pianos. I work on a contract basis, with about
300 - 400  hours a year budgeted (and there is never any more available).
This works out to about 8 hours a day for 70 pianos, even worse than your
situation. I have been lobbying ever since I got there for more hours, and
hope that now (working on my fifth chairman) I will finally succeed in making
it a half time position - still not really ideal, but an immense improvement.
The chair promises that this is his "top priority" and is "in process now."
I'm not holding my breath, but I have told him I' "outahere" as of May unless
the process is complete by then.

I think one fulltime technician per 60 to 70 pianos is a good benchmark to
try for, but I'm afraid I believe that our situations are more typical of
your everyday state university music department. Small colleges may even be
worse. Originally I tried to "patch holes" to the extent that the faculty
would not notice how bad things were getting. More recently I have decided
that that was a bad policy, and so I have begun to let things slide
noticeably - not do the half hour special regulate/lube/voice the high spots
for the critical faculty. It's the critical faculty who need to be lobbying
for more money/time for the technician. If they are happy, all the
technician's bellyaching does is give him/her a reputation as a complainer.

Good luck!

Fred Sturm
Albuquerque