PTG of course is the Piano Technicians Guild and this years convention was held in Grand Rapids Michigan. Grand Rapids is a pain to get to but is a lovely little city with a fantastic convention facility.

For the past number of years Ferdinand Braeu, our Technical Director has given a class on Maintaining the Bosendorfer Tone. The class combined theory and hands on voicing and has been well received. Ferdinand couldn’t make it this year due to his being needed at the introduction of the new Audi designed Bosendorfer at Audi headquarters in Germany. The replacement instructor got hung up in Paris with passport problems. It seems that the US introduced a new regulation on July 1 requriing that visitors from europe use a passport with an embedded computer readable chip. It didn’t matter that he was using an otherwise perfectly valid Swiss passport – he couldn’t get on the plane.

So Gerald Stremnitzer, a somewhat frequent visitor to the US, cut his holiday short and came over in time for the 2nd of our 2 scheduled classes.

The first class had to be rescheduled to the first time slot of the first day, so attendance was quite low. Despite this inconvenience I led a spirited discussion of voicing and high end piano jive among the 4 students

Stremnitzer’s class was held as scheduled so the attendance was quite a bit better. He did a great job and we had about 30 serious attendees who asked good questions. There was one very interesting point made. An attendee made a valid observation that factory technicians like Herr Stremnitzer have very deep knowledge about one manufacturer but their experience is not as broad over different makers. The attendee continued the observation to say that a skilled RPT could perhaps do a better job on a piano of a different make than could a dedicated factory tech, meaning that the breadth of experience a skilled independent American tech might have would, in that case, be better than the deep experience of the factory tech. To this Gerald replied: “I don’t think so”.

This was very funny and very true. It’s more of a comment on skill levels between Europe and the US. Those who work for one of the top 8 or 10 makers have reached a professional peak by going through a rather strict training sequence, one far more demanding than anything organized and available in the US. There are some wonderfully skilled technicians in the US and the depth of knowledge of the average PTG member grows constantely. But the hands on practice on high end pianos, under the watchful eye of a skilled master, over a period of years, is hard to come by here.

Training trumps experience? Of course, not quite so simple.

Gerald Stremnitzer of Bosendorfer, Grand Rapids 2009

I’m still a little conflicted about this blog…on one hand the power of a blog is when the writer is completely honest about a topic people care about. The problem is that being completely honest may not be in my best business interest. No, no scandals about Bosendorfer using laminated soundboards. But other observations, experiences that may not look so good in print. On the other hand, nobody seems to be reading this..

I did a PTG presentation in Dayton OH that went, I thought, extremely well.  Not exactly a dynamic group with detailed questions, but they all stayed and stayed awake, which is the first measure of success. I think I do a good job with these tech presentations (“look…that’s a lot of CHALK!!”) and techs are influential, but what I need right now is short term business.

The fall selling season still has not started in earnest. Dealers are reporting being ahead overall of last year, but the high end seems stalled. Yes, economic uncertainty blah blah, but in the end you never really know what drives customers and in the absence of a specific outside reason, my conclusion is that I’m doing something wrong. That does not lead to restful nights.

Another big, beautiful promotion on the east coast, really beautiful presentation, with less than stellar results. My theory is that promotions just do not bring in our customers..they will buy when they are damn well good and ready, which makes it difficult to plan. However, I’ve got some ideas on that as well, and maybe putting some into action.

You could also say this is in the “my eyes were bigger than my stomach” category. I got tool obsessed while at the PTG convention in Kansas City and ordered a bunch of stuff from both Schaff and PianoTek. I’ve known the Johnson brothers at Schaff for decades and prefer them, but they don’t have some of the cooler new stuff PianTek has.  However, man, is PianoTek expensive.

Anyway sent in an order to PianoTek without totaling it….$360!! So I had to remove the coolest stuff for now, those key weighting weights in the wooden box, the instant hygrometer and the digital tape measure…damn! I need balance and front rail punchings more.