Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Tuner-Technicians Forum Almost 500 Pianos (Let's try this again)

I found out today that I start Monday as the piano technician for the San Diego Unified School District, and there are nearly 500 pianos in the district.

Woo Hoo!

Don't do 'em all in one month!!

Congrats!!

So, how many days off per decade do you get?

Thanks, Keith!

B986, Maybe one...

Seriously, I estimate half of the pianos aren't on any kind of maintenance schedule; as a matter of fact, the whole shebang might be demand-only. The few elementary schools I've seen has pianos that are never seen, while middle and high schools (with music programs) get regular attention.

I don't know how it all works yet.

Congratulations! If you have a smart phone take photos and tag them with serial # and room location. Then you can create files regarding work done, work needed, and overall condition.

Ed, I like that idea. I've been taking photos of the serial number of every piano I work on, so that would be right up my alley.

Congratulations,
what kind of service are they asking for and what kind are you wiilling to provide ? on 500 pianos one person can only tune, do you take the opportunity to have your professional's friends and colleagues net growing ?

OR will you put your shoes in the precedent tech job (no maintenance, minimal job)
.
Those kind of contract decided without evaluating the need, no competition, and asking for different offers from different qualification companies, sound as usual bad decision to me.

Not knowing your experience as a school tech or value, this I do not say for you, but because I know that maintening the value (musical but even resale) of a large amount of pianos in schools is a job for a pool of technicians with directions, or with a plan.

That said even now that competition is mandatory, the ones that decides choose the cheapest offer, generally being unable to understand the differences between offers and what mean experienced maintenance techs vs simple tuners.

I would be happy to have such "sure job" but the quality of the instruments would be a problem (particularly here).

Without any maintenance budget for decades, uincontrolled heating and difficult "pianists" the problems are numerous.

May be you can help the situation to evolve, which can be good for the students and the next techs that will be working there.

It is easier to "take the money and run", as most techs probably would do.

WIthout plan, without experience, without specific training to school pianos (that deos not exists but that should be agood idea) I see you will have problems to make jobs that can be satisfactory for yourself (money apart).

I do not know if you are the kind that can work collegiality, but if they ask one person to take care of 500 pianos, something is wrong there yet.

That said I have no idea of the way things are decided for maintenance, repairs, resale, buy of new pianos, etc.

Congratulations again, I'm curious to see if you have any time to post once your job will begin

Greetings

Ah, now I can see this thread. So, CONGRATULATIONS !

I, as does Olek, have some suspicions about this great opportunity, so here are some random, quick thoughts:

1. Understand fully the paper work methodology of your new situation.
2. Get to know the persons at the top of this new food chain and personalities who now control your life - yep, 500 pianos will dominate your work life. Those personalities will only make it worse, if you don't know them all by name. I am speaking of the accounts payable folks, as well as the direct decision makers at the top, now, not the individual piano users. They come later.
3. Propose, and have approved, a modus operandi which will limit the on-demand calls, and maximize the pre-scheduled tuning.

4. Plan to have your apprentice begin an intensive work plan with you, going to most of the pianos, especially going to any schools which have multiple pianos. Plan, if possible, to have that apprentice do some trouble-shooting, minor repairs, and capstan adjustment, etc. ahead of you, so that you come behind and tune. Have a complete understanding of charges for this with the powers that be, beforehand. They hired you, not an apprentice, so somehow you have to make this palatable to them. It is a plus, since they will get more for the dollar, due to the lower hourly cost of the assistant, but they may not clearly see this.

5. Consider getting access after-hours for most work. No, do more than consider it. You simply must do it! In the long run, you will save needless aggravation and countless hours of wasted time. Think of this as working evening shift, or working and ultra-early morning shift.
6. Severe case and wheel damage is common in schools. If you can work with a trolley which can easily carry your tools kit, a piano cradle, and an action cradle, this may be of benefit. Your apprentice, of course, is in charge of handling your trolley and making use of the cradles. (Ah, thank you Lord, for younger backs.)

7. If you will not be paid for an extensive review upfront of all these pianos, plan to have a pre-agreed list of potential repairs, with a price list which includes, but is not limited to: Replace castors, repair loose toe block, replace pedal/pedal set, Lost motion, key bushing set, etc. Time waste will kill you, if you don't have some understanding in this area. After all, a complete review of every piano, up-front, would take weeks on this many pianos.

8. Since your primary challenge will be logistics, seek to schedule this work on a route system, just as though you were leaving town for a distant work trip. In the long run, you can waste just as much time in this multi-school situation, due to school schedule confusion and zig-zag travel, as you would waste going too far for too little work.

9. If possible, get authorization from the top to simply start geographically and plan logical routes to begin to knock this work out, regardless of demands from the piano users. THIS IS NOT LIKELY, but we will pray for you here.
10. OR, IF YOU MUST, AND PROBABLY WILL BE FORCED INTO, set up a priority list based on criteria which you will share with your task masters. Have the central office do a work requisition announcement, so that the users help with the process. The paper trail/system probably already includes this, but you are coming into a wild, wild situation IMHO. Build a database, contact list of all the piano users and contact people for the individual pianos, but at the same time, hope that you are shielded from their individual requests as much as possible. (not likely)
A. The priority they set as best they now know.
B. Your knowledge of which pianos are not even used and what they desire to do with them
C. Travel logic
D. Special needs and extra repairs
E. Piano transfers of unused to take the place of "special needs" instruments (Beware political landmines. Don't let these transfers be your idea. Submit to the powers that be and let them request the transfer.)

This is a really big deal for you. The management demands can undercut the best of technical work, so I hope that this helps. Hopefully, your working of the system artfully, while you actually help fine tune their system, can prevent this great opportunity from becoming a nightmare instead.

I agree with the above - You need to find out fast how it works. In fact, the time to find that out would have been before bidding the job. I would also build a team of technicians to call on if needed. Pianos in Sandy Eggo will hold a tune longer due to the mild weather, so that will help, but take a look how universities with 250 pianos are set up:

One head tech, 2-3 full or part time tech, and student help as well.

You, on your own will maintain twice that number? Isn't going to happen. There is simply too much for one person to do, or the pianos will never be properly maintained.

I suppose if the pianos get tuned every three years..........it could work.....

School districts often leave it up to the teachers to tune the piano, and find the money as well - so this could be more of an on call thing, which means you could get calls to tune 100 pianos in 100 different schools the second week of December for all the X mas concerts.

A better approach from the school district would have been to split the region between 5 techs, geographically - and pay the going rate so enough technicians would be interested.

This sounds like the voice of experience to me.

500 pianos, 50 weeks a year with 2 weeks vacation, 10 pianos a week, 2 a day?

<grin>

Congratulations! (I think)

Remember to take your vitamins. Or, you could obtain liquid fortification from the Shout House.

Unfortunately, pianos need more than tuning. Especially institution pianos....

Why do you assume that Opera Tenor's apprentice(if he even have one)is 'YOUNG' with a healthy(young)back.
I think, quite frankly, that this is an age discrimination reasoning. Disturbing and political incorrect.
I'll make a point to never ask you, if you have any apprentice openings.

-Herr Weiss

I think you might have had a sense of humour failure there Mr Weiss. He didn't assert that OperaTenor should have an apprentice, and that his apprentice necessarily should be young and have a healthier back. It's just generally true that apprentices are usually younger than those they serve under, and younger people usually have healthier backs. I guess RestorerPhil probably has the odd bit of back trouble himself, and so is projecting that problem onto the topic at hand.

Traditionally speaking, apprentices have been "young", regardless of what field they are apprenticing in. Am I missing something?

There is no pleasure having an apprentice if he/she does not carry your bags, shine your shoes, and do all the dirty work.

Old farts are the best technicians , anyway !

Personally I find it very normal to practice some sadic vengeance for all the humiliations I received from the old techs.

When the apprentice is well broken in (back inclueded) , you change for a new, it is easy now with al those cheap asian made apprentice we have on the market.

etc...

Regards

Sorry for jumping the gun, my fellow members; but I was not joking.
My apologises to all and especially to Restorer Phil for my comment.
The point is that I'm no 'Spring Chicken' and know first hand that
many doors are closed because of age.
I'm grateful to all for the knowledge I learned so far here in this wonderful forum. Will think twice before posting again.
Peace, H.W.

No offense taken. Some of us really enjoyed your comments, especially (and most obviously) Olek. (My wife guffawed out loud!)

I have a back that lifted too many pianos until I pretty much stopped doing all the primary lifts on moving jobs a few years ago at age 55. My doctor had said stop about 25 years before that, so you can understand that I sleep but little at a time.

Hopefully, H.W., you will be like my friend Everett Grizzard who lifted pianos, in spite of being a blind tuner and never had back pain until years after his retirement. He is now 79 or 80 years of age and enjoying travel as much as he can. My back just didn't get the set of genetics that his did. (His loss of vision, by the way, was due to two separate accidents which blinded him, one eye at a time. He and his wife made one heck of a piano service and sales Yamaha operation - the longest standing Yamaha dealer in Georgia, until he quit!)

Of course, I have found that if I don't tune and don't lift much, my back doesn't bother me, except when I try to sleep. Oh well, can't turn back the hands of time, nor change my lot so far as the back I was given. Also, I do carry my own cradles and tools - no apprentice out there on the road with me, but the Original Poster does seem to have one.

This comment was from a thread titled "Wish Me Luck." I picked up on his humor and remembered his mention of a helper. Because of that, I worked the concept into some sort of idea which might make it possible for Opera Tenor to manage his predicament, ...er blessing.



What I wrote was my way of saying, "Put that guy to work right now and think creatively on how to let him help you manage this heavy work load right away."

Oh, before I forget, I said "guy" and "him," only due to the fact that Opera Tenor's helper is male, and therefore hope I am not guilty of any sort of discrimination, improper implication, heresy, or political incorrectivity.

"incorrectivity" ??? Hmmmm... Is that a word? My spell-checker says no.