Apprentice

[Richard Moody]

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> From: Gregory Torres <Tunapiana@adisfwb.com>
> To: pianotech@ptg.org
> Subject: Apprentice 
> Date: Tuesday, April 14, 1998 2:30 AM
> 
> Dear List,
> 
>then full time in a shop where we
> rebuilt or reconditioned just about every kind of piano imaginable. I
> learned a great deal in a very short while.
> 
> Just wanted to get some opinions and thoughts. I would like to help this
> fellow if I can.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> Sincerely,
> Greg Torres

Working a shop is the best experience. We must remember in these times,
the opportunities of working factories is not like what it was in the late
19th and early 20th centuries.  Many promenent names appearing on pianos
from that time came from  young people traveling from factory to factory,
from country to country in what the Germans call (for lack of spelling)
"wanderlust"  that is going from place to place to better and increase
skills. (With letters of introduction from the last place.)
	Then there were a closer to one hundered such factories in various
countires.  Today there are much less than 10 in the US.  Today it seems
the place to develope the skills once learned in factories are learned in
the shops of rebuilders.   To go out on "your own" means working part time
for someone else, while trying to  establishing your own clientel. It 
takes time, in the end most of it  happens by word of mouth.
	The Yellow Pages helps, but when called you must realize that in
comercial situations they reached you as a last resort, (either because
they (the callers are bad and no one wants to work for them, which by word
of mouth you  hopefully  know ),,,, (or they had someone who messed up and
they need some one to step in at the last moment and thus you gain a foot
in the door). And once this happens word of mouth really spreads, that is
if you rose to the occasion.
	So if you are confident in your skills and courteous to those around you,
especially in the good situations, and even in the "bad", you have the
best chance of "selling" your skills that "they" will be glad to pay $30,
$60, $120 per hour.  
	After-all what do you think their endeavor is worth?    

Richard Moody. 



>