Hi John and everyone!

I tuned pianos for 35 years as my main job. I restored and even rebuilt them for a while until we went to Kuwait. BOO! The phones for rebuilds and even the lower cost restoring STOPPED ringing the very day CNN went full time talking about Kuwait and the recession it would most likely bring. BOO again!

I saw the modern day boom and bust, with the boom being in the 70's around here, (Philly-Jersey-NY area), to the bust starting in '92, (Kuwait). My tunings went down starting in '92, besides the rebuilds and restorations being NO More. My wife and I choose to sell our home and self built-(with my dad and one neighbor)-shop, to avoid bankruptcy.

While in our rental place to live for four years, I drove a truck, and used my van that WAS a piano service van for courier service jobs. That ran my van into the ground, and I watched it be towed on a flatbed. I left that job the minute it went out of my sight down the street.

I once had a most successful piano tuning business, and tuned for many pro players, in their homes, and in concert venues. Russian ones too. Picky, picky, picky! Ha!

I first had a spinet when I was 12, when I took it over from my mom who had it given to her by my dad for her birthday gift. She soon let me be on all the time, when not playing drums or guitar. I got an old upright when I was 20, and even played another upright in one band for a year. OUCH! Heavy things, those uprights!

I saw many kids play piano through my years of tuning them. People were buying all styles of pianos like they were bread throughout the 70's and even the 80's. I had to go out on moves to help when first learning how to tune and repair, (1976).

I LOVE pianos!!!!! Like real drums as Bugsy mentioned, there is something so different and GREAT about sitting at one. Percussive for sure. I can sorta play the same way on the fakes, but there IS a difference in HOW the sound influences exactly HOW I play. Like being on real drums, where there are so much more dramatics to be expressed and experienced. Our ears have gotten used to sterile music. Sterile percussion in pop and other songs. Sterile piano sounds in tune with perfect pitch singers using pitch control. It is like we NEED sterile perfection more than unique instruments and their players.

I am part of the problem, *BUT not in a public way, as only you guys and a few others know about my playing and songs.

I still have my old upright! Tinnitus keeps me off of it a lot more than not though, (four years so far with this condition).

I still have my real drums too, (1965 Rogers - the Holiday model.

I still have my wife too, (my second actually though). Ha!

I will have to play my upright tomorrow, just for that old time, non perfect, very expressive feel and sound! That plate! That soundboard! Those ivories, thanks to some elephant before 1920.

Those same strings too! Pianos?! LIKE the Brooklyn Bridge! Try playing a 1920 guitar with it's strings not changed since 1920, and feel and hear it. Then play my upright! WOW! Such a great, punchy, full, expressive experience it is to play and hear my upright! Original everything but the bridal straps! Ha!

Lets give a BIG Hooray for The Piano!!!!! And to it's makers,
and to the regarded inventor, Bartolomeo Cristofori!

HOORAY!!!!

ANYONE: Play one in some store soon if not having one. Ask for a tuned one.

Actually a Member Since 1996 or 97 (Number One Hundred Something).
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