[pianotech] Workload

[Tom Servinsky]

Can't help but jump in on this thread. Several years back I was asked by the Florida Bandmasters Assoc. to tune all of the pianos for the solo and ensemble festivals. Basically 24 Baldwin Hamilton's were moved in from all of the district schools onto the college site. When I agreed to do the job I was figuring I would have several days to get the work done. The look of surprise when I learned that morning that the festival started the following morning at 10am.
Believe it or not I pulled it off, but with much pain and remorse for many months. All pianos were left at concert A440.
My routine was to do the tunings at 28mins each and do 4 in a row. Take a 1/2 break. Then 4 more. Then an 1 hr break. Then back at it for the remainder of the day and night. I finished sometime around 4am. Not only the obvious pain in my back and wrists, but my ears hurt like a dickens. Half way through I ended up putting ear plugs into to soften the impact.
Needless to say the Association wasn't too thrilled when I handed them a very high bill. They initially said this bill was outrageous. I nodded my head and said it certainly is.
Tom Servinsky
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Gerald Groot 
  To: pianotech at ptg.org 
  Sent: Saturday, October 31, 2009 11:00 AM
  Subject: Re: [pianotech] Workload


  Well, you do get used it after a while.  As for records, I tuned 11.  Started at 9 AM.  Took two 10 minute breaks in the morning, took an hour lunch and was done by 2 PM.  Spent on average 20 minutes a piece and they did come out nice.  I was working with another tech who couldn't believe it. I was pretty tired by then though.  

   

  From: pianotech-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Porritt, David
  Sent: Saturday, October 31, 2009 10:33 AM
  To: pianotech at ptg.org
  Subject: [pianotech] Workload

   

  The messages in this thread certainly shows a remarkable variety of "full days" from 3 or 4 to 15 - 18!  My view of the high numbers is probably skewed by a guy I know who can do 15 pretty regularly.  His end result is not to be confused with a concert tuning nor actually even a decent console tune-up.  

   

  I'm sure that many of you who do the high daily numbers do very good work I just can't keep up with that pace.  My personal record is 10 in a day.  That was 5 each in two schools (little driving) and the pianos were tuned twice a year and all were P22s (easy to tune).  That was also many years ago when I was considerably younger!  How do you manage that many tunings in a day?

   

  dave

   

   

  _________________________
  David M. Porritt, RPT
  Meadows School of the Arts

  6101 Bishop Blvd.
  Southern Methodist University
  Dallas, TX 75275
  dporritt at smu.edu

   




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