SANTA BARBARA CHAPTER
February Meeting: (2nd Monday)
Date: Monday, February 8, 2021
Time:
7:00 pm
Location: Your Device
The Santa Barbara Chapter continues to meet monthly via Zoom. A standard segment of our meetings has become a business check-in and keeping each other apprised of the latest health/business/stimulus/relief actions and standards. So far we are all healthy and businesses are sustaining.
We discussed diverse topics at our January meeting, including the proposed Student PTG membership being considered (which we all support) and Steinway charging $50 to look up old serial numbers and then telling people it would cost upwards of $80k to restore, which of course should only be done by Steinway.
Besides the smattering of technical issues that we bring to each other from field work, we had a good discussion of what our chapter can do to support new tuner/technicians, especially at this time when we're not meeting in person and it's challenging to demonstrate or mentor various repairs or tuning practices. There was a fair amount of concern among our newer members as to developing aural tuning skills, but in general we reasoned that now might not be the best time to work on those, in the absence of a mentor to guide and check your work. Now might be a better time to work on tuning unisons and octaves, and investing in a quality ETD will allow you to work more confidently. And while it's still a struggle to learn and teach repairs without being hands-on in the same room, now is also a good time to practice those skills, and as a chapter we will attempt some video instruction to that end.