Pianos. What is a piano? What does it do? Where am I?

Some general thoughts...

I'm a piano technician. My profession is a blend of engineering and carpentry, but feels like more of an art than a science. I'm deeply passionate about anything mechanical, analog, tactile, and I love even more something that fits those categories while being built from sturdy, old world materials and covered in artwork. Pianos are all this and more. They are a wonderful blend of acoustic and mechanical engineering. Their construction makes them durable enough to last hundreds of years, so finding an antique one is very common. And of course, machines built a century ago or more were often overengineered and ornately decorated. (I am aware of survivorship bias, but the sheer quantity of ornately decorated common objects being produced in that time is staggering compared to the present day. Victorian industrial sites looked like cathedrals.)

Naturally, I have opinions on pianos. You can probably guess some of them based on the previous paragraph... Every technician has a different philosophy about them. Some techs are utilitarian, doing whatever client work will make them the most money to keep their business afloat. Some exclusively work with concert halls. Some people are focused on the highest end instruments, ones that are go out to rich customers who drop 100k+ on a new grand and expect it to perform immaculately. Even though I somehow landed a job doing this, it's not where I belong.

I want to save them all. Do you know how many pianos are thrown away each month? I don't, but I can tell you about the ones that didn't make the cut. In the warehouse, there's a corner where we shove all the broken pianos nobody wants. About 10-20 a month are tossed into a landfill. Less than half are truly worth saving, but still... Say five pianos of excellent craftsmanship, mechanically and artistically, are destroyed. That's an atrocity! All in the name of profit! I am not the one who was born to take a mechanically assembled monolith of an instrument from 95% of its potential to 99%. (A piano can never be at 100% of it's potential.) Not to deny the importance of this work, people do enjoy these instruments. But no. I do something that I find myself doing with many machines, but for pianos in particular, have honed my skills to the sharpest point I can. I was born to take a piano on the brink of death, at 10% or less, and raise it, desperately, as far as it will allow. Helping it slowly come back to life. Letting it sing again. Hoping its creators can live just a little longer through their work. And I will do this to as many pianos as I can, until something stops me.

More on this page soon. 5/21