More Money in Tuning or Servicing?

[Ron Nossaman]

>Arnold;
> I agree with Jim C. Sr. there is more money to be made in the home service
>end of the business for less investment, less work, and less trauma to your
>psyche :-)

*The Jims are correct. In an operation where the Executive Branch and the
Labor Pool consist of the same person, this is certainly true. Rebuilding
becomes more lucrative in bigger shops, but the bigger the shop, the more
the owner must become an administrator. I rebuild in, and around, a
seasonally fluctuating tuning schedule. During heavy tuning months, the days
flow by fairly uneventfully, and the only fun I get is social. My customers
tell me that their other service people don't pick on them like I do, and
they seem to like it. One down side is the major political battles I have to
get into in school systems just to gain access to a piano at the scheduled
time. Another is the time spent in the truck connecting the dots from A to
F, or what ever. Aside from brief moments of aggrevation when I have to
battle some 'monkey puzzle' case design for access, a string that committed
suicide when I pulled it up, or amorous livestock, it's just a day's work.
Next year, a tuning day will be very much like a tuning day this year, which
was very much like a tuning day last year. Any potential change in the
process is relatively minor, so there isn't a whole lot of room for playing
with the process.  

Rebuilding is resurrection, raising the dead, with improvements. It requires
a much broader knowledge base, and entirely different skills and diciplines.
The potential for education, entertainment, and disaster inherent in the
process is nearly infinite, and much more dramatic in scale (no pun) than
anything you could do with just tuning and field repair. Most rebuilders I
know are constantly tinkering with their attitudes, supplies, techniques,
jigs, and priorities. I've maintained for years that if you aren't in over
your head on a regular basis, you aren't learning anything. Rebuilding, for
me, generates more interest, passion, terror, and ultimate satisfaction than
tuning could ever hope to. Rebuilding isn't nearly as quantified as tuning
either. There ain't no ERD yet, so I can wander out to the shop and be a
genuine pioneer by re-thinking one of my currently semi-standard processes
and doing something different. I can affect my own improvements because the
piano as we know it is a work in (fitful) progress, as are my methods.
Rebuilding is necessary to maintaining the tattered remnents of my sanity,
whatever the ledger says.  

There is, to me, a physical advantage to doing both tuning and rebuilding.
Going back and forth between the two lets me heal up from the tuning damage
while I abuse a different set of joints and muscle groups in the shop. The
quality of 'tired' after a day in the shop is markedly different from the
'tired' from a day of tuning.

So there you have it, another set of emotional responses that probably don't
answer your question. You have to work to eat, and you have to play to live.
While I can't recommend eating your work (in this business), doing something
you can occasionally look foreward to while making money is a pretty good
reason to get out of bed in the morning. Find the balance that works for you.


 Ron