Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Where one one learn how to be a tuner

When I learnt to drive, I learnt how to maintain them, old beaters were fine, fix them in a jiffy.

Same with motorbikes and building PCs.

I'm curious as to where and or how you would learn how to tune a piano and do general repairs to them?

I'm not looking to do this as a career or even a side job, its just something which interests me.... heck I find so many out of tune pianos everywhere in pubs and community centres. I keep thinking it'd be lovely to tune it up and bring them back to life.

Thanks

"Oh joy! Here we have the eloquent presentation of the aspirations of another casual tooner in the making."

That was a quote from my evil twin. 'Sorry. What I would suggest that is somewhat in line with Evil David, is that you carefully evaluate what you will contribute to the craft. To do a decent job requires much more time and dedication than you might think.

plus 1 David.

No offense Justpin but we already have far, far, FAR to many fly by night piano tuners in this business who have no interest in doing a good job, instead doing it part time or only as a hobby. Do something else if that is all you're interested in. It takes a LOT more time and a LOT more knowledge to tune them and to repair them correctly than you or most people think.

Think of a reason this is not being done at the present time. Could it be lack of funding?

I have been interested in training for this profession but I can't find anywhere to train for it. There are literally no accredited courses for it in Australia. There is one privateer who lets a handful of people in per year and charges nearly $30,000 for one year of tuition. Piano shops don't take on apprentices anymore. I am serious about any craft I do, but unfortunately, I just can't get good training here. And at the same time, the industry has been predicting a major shortage of piano techs in Australia in the next decade.

Randy Potters course is very informative and will help with what tools are needed to get started. I'm sure there are other home courses. You'll still need an experienced tooner to talk with as a sort of mentor. And of course, pianos to work on.

If you approach cautiously and with the right tools, I'm sure you'll fix more than you break. It's not rocket science but it does take experience to properly care for pianos.

The OP has gone silent. Just google "How to tune your own piano". You'll find a lot of 'you tube' info there. I do it once in a while to get a bit of entertainment. (My evil twin laughs at a lot of the videos, but then that is the natural manifestation of his evil nature.)

At times, these kinds of threads have been bait threads where the OP starts similar to this and then sits back and watches the quarreling about where to learn and what group to belong to which is the usual way threads such as this go.

Perhaps not this time.

I can only warn people who are committed enough to enroll in an correspondence course about the tools that typically come with the kit. They are generally not very useful and can actually inhibit the learning process. If at all possible, don't get those tools. Ask real, professional, working piano technicians about good tools and where to get them. Contact your local PTG Chapter - there is always someone there willing to give a serious student a leg up.

From what I have noted the tools are included in the cost of purchasing the course, so one gets them whether they are useable or not.

Yea, I had the niggling suspicion that this might be a sock-puppet post, but you can never tell.

I don't think it was a troll post. That is not consistent with the OPs posting history. I think it was just a casual enquiry as to how one might learn the craft. I have certainly been interested in the same thing, but there is just nothing going on in Australia. It's a terrible environment to try to learn to be a piano technician. Nobody will teach anybody because they are up to their eyeballs in work due to the extreme shortage of technicians. It's a vicious circle. I would have to leave my country and train somewhere else to become a piano tech with real training.

Of course, if I told you guys I was going to just learn on the job and try to pick up skills, read a lot and ask for lots of advice, most of you guys would shout me down for not getting proper training! Can't win.

Ando, the person already admits to "not looking to do this as a career or even as a side job....." That answers the question right there.

True, he is not really that interested, but the question itself is still a good one and the thread may be of great interest to other people - myself included. Unfortunately, there is no easy way to learn the craft in Australia since the last of the accredited courses disappeared a couple of years ago.

Why would anyone expect the OP to respond at all. He just asked a simple question and got the typical array or smart a** arrogant ridicule.

I expect if he is interested at all he will pursue it somewhere else. That's what I would recommend anyway.

This is what I said in my first post and I stand by it because it is true. We have far to many fly by nights and far to many part timers who could care less if they do good work or not. I am not about to help some "part timer" who doesn't even want to do it as a hobby, to do it.

I see a lot of pianos go for firewood.

Jo's Husband maakes wood burning stoves. I see a lot of them get the chop and into his fires. With frames going to a scrap dealer.

Some with broken sound boards. Some look OK, it'd be nice to save one or two of them now and again and as before I see untuned forgotten pianos in places I work and visit.

It seems such a waste.

Except I can repair motorbikes pretty well, and not bodging either. I don't do it as a profession I did it because it seemed interesting.

It came in very handy when I went for a ride around the world and had to replace the big end bearing in Ulan Baator with nothing but hand tools.

Thanks, I hate courses were you are not there, they feel like a rip off.

Anyway...

I guess it is one of those trades whereby it you have to be an apprentice and time served to get your stripes. I.e. follow somebody who is experienced in the trade.

Since this sort of thing is impossible for me, I guess this is a dead end.