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Randy Potter Registered Piano Technician Member Piano Technicians Guild 61592 S.E. Orion Drive Bend, Oregon 97702-2402 Phone: 541-382-5411 Fax: 541-382-5400 Email: randy@pianotuning.com © 2006 pianotuning.com all right reserved |
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Tips of the Month |
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Tuning, Technical and Business Tips of the Month Updated Regularly by Randy Potter, R.P.T. This column is offered as a public service to our industry. Note: We now send our Tips of the Month to students via our bi-monthly TunEmaiList Post - so I do not update this page as regularly anymore. However, you will find some new posts here from time to time, and we have left many of our previous posts here, for the benefit of those non-students looking at our web page. It will give you a little bit of insight into what we send on our TunEmiList Post to students, mentors, piano manufacturers' technical representatives, and friends of the school. Do you receive - and do you read - the Piano Technicians Journal, published monthly by The Piano Technicians Guild? If you do, you may have seen the articles I recently wrote on taxes, in the January, February and March 2004 issues. And you may have seen the article I wrote on cellular phone usage, published in the August 2004 issue. I recommend you read them. Happy New Year to you all. I have been away from doing Tips of the Month for a number of months. This is, in part, because we have been undating various parts of the course, in part to reflect adding three new video tapes to our course materials last year. And also, in part, because I have been spending more time writing and sending our TunEmaiList sort-of-monthly update posts to students and graduates. And speaking of "students and graduates", that is a term I use for any student who has taken our course, whether they graduated or not, and whether they finished it or not. I could say "current students, former students, graduates and alumni", but I just say "students and graduates", because it is easier to say. I just returned from our 2002 hands-on seminar, our Intermediate and Advanced Training Seminars at Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minnesota. We used to hold it in the summer, but the dates varied from year to year and it was difficult for me, my instructors, and students to plan ahead when we did not have firm dates until only a few months prior to the start of the seminar. It might be anywhere from June - August, depending on the college's summer schedule that year. In 2000 and 2001 we held it in May, the week after graduation, and worked pretty good. Last year they asked us if we would consider moving it the first full week in January, while the professors were still out on their Christmas Break, and we agreed to try it. I can tell you it is cold in Minneapolis in January, but it was warm inside Northwestern's School of Music where we were working. We did some different things this year, including adding a new, Pre-Seminar Seminar beginning two days prior to the start of our hands-on seminar, and it was also a success. Twenty-one students addended this year, an all but one of the students were able to come in early for it, and they all recommended we do it again next year, so we probably will. The dates for our next hands-on seminar are January 5-12 (Sunday - Sunday), 2003, with our Pre-Seminar Seminar dates being January 3 and 4. For those of you who are thinking we will be having a hands-on seminar in the summer of 2002 - nope! You can get details on our hands-on seminars by going back to the main menu and selecting Hands-On Seminars with Randy. Or click here: www.pianotuning.com/seminars2.htm. Keep checking back here for more information. Students: We have a new TunEmaiList, a "sort-of-monthly" post I send to students with updates and information. So if you have not been receiving this monthly post (usually posted within the first 10 days of each month), send me your current email address and we will put you on the list. Please put "TunEmaiList" in the Subject line, so I can find it easily. If you were on the list, but have not been receiving it, it means we got a Return Mail Notice or Mail Delivery Error, and your address has been automatically deleted from our list. When you sign up, simply send a post to randy@pianotuning.com Put TunEmaiList in the Subject line, and if you know your student number please put that in the main body. I can look it up, but it will save me some time if you put it in the message, if you know it. Thanks, Randy
Business & Tax Tips of the Month - February 2002 As tax time approaches, many of you are calling for tax advice. There are two questions I get asked most often. First, whether you can deduct the cost of your
course on your income tax. As you know, IRS regulations say "you cannot deduct the cost of training for a new business or profession". So, while you are a student, until you become a piano technician and start a business (i.e. start earning money for tuning and servicing pianos), you may not deduct the cost of your course off your income tax. That one is pretty straight-forward. But as you also know, when you are in business you may deduct the cost of not only tools, parts and supplies, but books, video tapes, magazines, association dues, additional training, and so on. How does that relate to our course? Under IRS regulations we are also allowed to "convert personal property to business property". If you have a personal car, and then go into business and use that car for business purposes, you can deduct its use off your income taxes as an expense - on your Schedule C form, which is your "Profit or Loss from Business or Profession". You can either deduct so much a mile (it changes from year to year, and is currently about 33.5 cents a mile), or you may take the business percentage of its total costs, including interest and depreciation. (See your IRS instructions for details.) If you become a carpenter, and start using your personal hammer and saw and drill on the job, you "convert" them to business use. Maybe you bought that hammer for $34 three years ago, but if it is still worth $34 you can deduct $34. If you bought that drill for $150, but used half of it up and its current value is only $75, then you can deduct the $75, because the IRS says we can deduct the cost or current market value of an item that is used for business. Now, to the course. The written materials,
books, video tapes, and such, have a current "value" of
$945, since people who are already piano technicians pay $9455
when take our course. So if you have become a piano technician
and are "in business" (i.e. earning money servicing
pianos), and are now "converting" your course materials
from personal property to business property, you can deduct
$945.00. You might want to add this in with other books,
magazines and upgrade training costs, such as the registration
fees at PTG conventions, or our hands-on training Intermediate
and Advanced Training Seminar. The key, however, is whether or not you have "become a piano technician". Did you earn money tuning and repairing pianos last year? If so, you are a piano technician, and will report your income on the C Schedule. And if you want to take your business expenses and deductions this year, you can. But, and this is entirely up to you, if you did not earn very much money last year you might want to defer these deductions for these materials until this year, when you had a higher income. In other words, when it "looks" more like you are in business. You cannot defer reporting your income, but you could decide to defer "converting" these items from personal to business property into this year, if you wanted. The IRS is not likely to audit you just because you "lost" money your first year in business, or your second year, because they know many small businesses report a "loss" during the first few years of start-up. If you just started doing tuning for pay in December, for example, and only earned $500, you might want to defer these expenses until this year. There is no IRS Form to do this. You just take a piece of paper and list the things you are "converting" from personal to business property, write the purchase price or current value (you may have to guess at this, because you probably did not keep the receipt - and this would not be a problem since the IRS does not require it), total it up, and then add it to the other similar items in your accounting, and take it off on your income tax. Where did I get this information? From three different Licensed Tax Consultants / Enrolled Agents we use and have used in the past. And from three different IRS agents I talked to about it, because I did not want to give you incorrect information. And also from a retired IRS auditor I worked with in year 2001. Second, whether you can deduct part of your
house as "business use of your home (or apartment, if you
rent)". There used to be many, many, complicated and difficult to understand and interpret rules and regulations, and many who took a "home office deduction" were afraid of being audited and denied. No so any more. The rules have changed, and are much more simple. In the 1999 new Rules for Business Use of Your Home Office (IRS Publication 533, Rev. Jan. 2000, page 7), there are now only two rules that need to be satisfied: 1) "You use it exclusively and regularly for administrative or management activities of your trade or business", and 2) "You have no other fixed location where you conduct substantial administrative or management activities of your trade or business". Now, business use of the home has never been a problem for piano technicians. This is because most of us have our business telephone at our house 24 hours a day, our answering device answers at our phone 24 hours a day, our office and office supplies are at our house 24 hours a day, our tools, parts, repair supplies and repair and/or regulating shop are at our house 24 hours a day. (Of course we not "using", in the form of touching, these items 24 hours a day, any more than a retail store is open for business 24 hours a day - except L.L.Bean, who never closes.) No piano technician I know has ever had their business use of the home denied by the IRS, and I have personally be audited twice and on each occasion business use of my home was never even questioned, let alone disallowed. However, these new rules will make it even more likely that piano technicians who shied away from taking a business use of the home deduction in the past will take the allowable deduction in the future. Any questions? Talk to the Enrolled Agent (not a bookkeeper, not an account, not a tax preparer,and not a CPA, because these people are not licensed to give you tax advice, talk to an Enrolled Agent) who helps you file your taxes. Updated 01/02
P.S. Some of our previous Tips of the Month appear below - - -
Tools Tip of the Month - March 2000 Most piano technicians are, at least to some extent, "toolophiles" (which means we like tools, gadgets, basically any sort of shiny things - which includes cars and a host of other things, too). And as such, we tend (especially those of us who are guys) to look for excuses to buy tools. Once we become piano technicians, it seems it is easy to find more things to buy than our wallets can afford. So I often get questions from students as to whether or not they should buy this or that tool, part or repair supply. Thanks for asking. The answer is usually the same thing I teach in the course, though us toolophiles often miss that - so I will restate it here. First, if you think you want or need a tool -
wait. Tom Cobble, R.P.T., one of our Technical Advisors, says
"You should never buy a tool unless you have done the job
first without the tool." There are two reasons Tom says
this: And two, because most beginning piano technicians tend to spend their money (sometimes a whole lot of money) on tools to do repair jobs, when they are not even out doing tuning yet - and these very wonderful and useful tools can end up sitting for months and months on the shelf, collecting dust instead of collecting money. I recently received a call from a student asking whether they should purchase our Genesis Keytop-Keyfront Resurfacing Jig, which is used to remove keytops and keyfronts and surface the top of the key in preparation for new, thicker, keytops (and/or keyfronts). I told him that while this is a great tool, and he should certainly consider getting it if he has a set of keytops to replace . . . it is not useful unless you have a keytop replacement job lined up. He also had several other tools he was asking about getting, in all totaling well over $500. In his case, he is not tuning for pay yet, and I told him that while it is useful to study the repair and regulating chapters, and to practice doing the repair and regulating jobs in the assignments (often using the parts and supplies the come with the course), it is more logical and needful for him to be using his available finances to do what he needs to do to begin tuning for pay. That may mean purchasing an Accu-Tuner, or renting one. I pointed out that since most (virtually all) of the repair and regulating jobs we get come directly from work we see and recommend when we are tuning, storing up repairing and regulating tools is not a good use of our time and money when we are not yet tuning for pay. However, having said that, there are a few tools I would like to recommend. These come from Sears, and if you have read much of the course you know I like Sears Craftsman tools a lot. (I also like Snap-On Tools, and have visited their factory in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and will buy Snap-On tools when I can get them.) One of the reasons I like to buy quality tools is because they come with a Lifetime Replacement Warranty. This is especially useful for screwdrivers, which do get ruined over time and need replacement. 1" Micrometer: Sears #40774. Price:
$19.95.
1/8" x 3" Slotted Screwdriver: Sears
#47440R: Price: $3.99 Business Tip of the Month - November 1999 Fly Free to PTG Seminars, Conventions and Randy Potter School Hands-On Workshops! “I can't afford the plane ticket.” Too often I hear piano technicians use this “excuse” as to why they do not attend more (or any) seminars, conventions or workshops. But what if the tickets were free? They can be. All you have to do is get a VISA, MasterCard or American Express card that gives you airline frequent flyer miles for every charge you make. (No, I do not sell or provide credit cards, and I am not going to try to hawk one to you at the end of this monologue.) Most of us have at least one credit card. “The fewer, the better”, is my opinion, but life is so much easier if you have at least one. You can secure a hotel or motel reservation with it. You can't rent a car without one. You can use it to buy virtually anything you need. And each time you use it you build up frequent flier miles, usually one mile for each dollar you spend. And if you use it to buy your airline ticket, or pay for your hotel room, or rent a car, you can get frequent flier miles for the money you spend when you buy the ticket, and more through the hotel's, or rental car agency's, frequent flier mileage program. The only credit card I carry anymore is my Northwest World Perks VISA Gold Card. Northwest has co-op arrangements with Alaska and Horizon Airlines (which I use frequently because they fly into my local airport), Continental, KLM, Quantas and others, plus all the major hotels and car rental agencies. (United's partner, United Express, also serves my local airport, but I don't like the airplanes they fly so I fly Horizon instead.) You will want to get your card through an airline that services your local airport, and connects to the places you want to go. Delta, for example, does not have a “flying partner” that flies into my local airport, so I seldom fly Delta. (They have great food, though.) My recommendation is to get your card through the “major” airline you will be using, not the smaller flying partner you may also be using. I have a Northwest VISA, though I could also get a Horizon VISA or Alaska VISA. The smaller “flying partners” also have cards, and you can get free flights on their airlines, but because they do not have arrangements with the major hotels in other parts of the country (where a convention may be held), or all the rental car agencies, or other services, you may be limiting your mileage options. However, if you have your card with the major airline you also get miles for flying their smaller flying partners as well, and when you book your free flights using your miles their smaller “partners” flights come at no extra cost in miles. Because you are getting monthly miles statements in the mail, you often receive promotional offers, such as the one I received recently offering flights across the U.S. or Canada for $208-348, depending on how far you are flying, and from the U.S. or Canada to Europe for as low as $409. Since I usually fly more than 25,000 miles a year, I qualify for Northwest's Elite status (different airlines have different names, but they all have something similar), which means I get a 50% mileage bonus every time I fly, free First Class upgrades, priority boarding (with the First Class passengers, so I can put my carry-on in the overhead before other people fill it up), and other perks. If you might be flying very much, make sure you fly with one airline, and their partners, to receive the most benefits from your miles. I get 500 miles minimum (even for a 100 mile flight) - and I get my miles on Northwest, even if I am flying on Alaska, or Horizon, or Continental, or KLM, or Hawaiian Air, or Quantas, or a host of others. If you are booking a vacation, whether for yourself or your family, consider having your agent book it through the airline's vacation planning system. Northwest's is called World Perks Vacations, and when you (your travel agent, usually) book it you receive miles when you pay for the vacation, extra miles and bonuses for booking the package vacation, plus flight miles, car rental miles, and so on. We did that last year when we went to Japan for the International Association of Piano Builders and Technicians (IAPBT) international congress in Hamamatsu, Japan. We saved money on our flight, on our hotel in Tokyo, on our hotel in Hawaii on the return trip, on our rental car, and received several bonuses along the way. If you sometimes use a second airline, try to consolidate your flights with one partner system, so you can get free flights on the other airline, too. I flew Delta four times this past year, and since they are partners with United I used my United number, and adding the miles I earned flying to New Zealand last fall I already have a free flight built up with them, too. And considering they are also partners with American, I can use the miles for a free flight on Delta, United or American, and their flying partners. I am not recommending you run up a credit card bill just to get some free miles. In most cases, though, if you have a credit card now you can transfer your balance to your new airline card and get additional miles for those amounts. Plus, you usually get several thousand miles just for opening up the account! So, next time you are thinking about going to a PTG seminar or convention, or a Randy Potter School Hands-On Seminar, don't say you cannot afford the plane ticket - use the free ticket you earned by using your airline mileage card. Business Tip of the Month - May 1999 SPRING/SUMMER Edition of MUSIC PRODUCT DIRECTORY just released by Ancott Associates: If you have taken our course, you know that I recommend every piano technician subscribe to the Music Product Directory. In fact, more than “recommend” - I believe every piano technician needs to have the Music Product Directory if they are going to do any purchase consultations, or valuation estimates on pianos. And every dealer needs to have the current edition, to help them compare their offerings with what is available on the market, or to evaluate trade-in and used piano values. There are at least three main reasons every piano technician should have this publication. First, I do not believe you can properly appraise the value of a used piano - either for insurance purposes or for someone wishing to sell it or purchase it - if you do not know the value of an equivalent new piano. The Acoustic Piano Edition gives comprehensive piano descriptions, technical details and manufacturers' suggested retail prices by brand, model, size, style and finish. These details, for every brand and model of piano regularly available in the U.S. and Canada (including Chinese and Indonesian models), is in Part I of each edition. Second, I do not believe you can advise your clients on the purchase of one piano over another if you know little or nothing factual about them. Hearsay and salesman's' pitches are not good enough. Part II contains models by size (height or length, soundboard construction and size [number of square inches], pinblock ply construction, length of the longest bass string and country of manufacture. Knowing the country of manufacture is more important in recent years, as many Asian makers now have their own “off shore” factories - Japanese and Korean makers with factories in China or Indonesia, for example. It used to be that all Yamaha pianos were made in Japan, but now we find models made in China and the U.S. as well. All Samick and Young Chang pianos used to be made in Korea, but they now have models made in the China or Indonesia. One would expect a George Steck to be made in the U.S., or something with a name like Steigerman to be made in Germany, perhaps, but both are made in China. Oftentimes the dealer does not have this information readily available (or chooses not to make it readily available), and the only place to quickly and easily find it is in the Music Product Directory. Experienced piano technicians can attest that there is a difference between a certain manufacturer's made in Korea, or the same manufacturer's pianos made in China or Indonesia. This is information the purchaser wants to know before they make the purchase, not after the technician begins finding quality problems with the piano after it has been delivered to their home. Third, I do not believe you can consider yourself a knowledgeable piano technician if you have no concrete, factual knowledge of the object of your profession. I do not mean any offense, but you cannot expect to get that kind of factual objective information from a piano salesmen or dealer any more than you can expect to get it from a car dealer. In fact, store owners as well as piano owners often rely on us for that information, and the only place you are going to get it outside of actually inspecting every make and model of piano for yourself is from the Music Product Directory. (You can see many of these makers' pianos at the exhibit hall while attending PTG conventions and conferences around the U.S. and Canada, but most of the piano companies do not attend at all. And those that do attend often bring their best pianos, and only after giving them a complete service. Often these pianos are not representative of what the "average" dealer has on his floor. let alone the condition of the pianos when they are delivered to the dealer's showroom.) Part III is a relatively new addition; Price Point Comparison. It lists pianos by style and size, and then gives the price from least expensive to most expensive in each category. This is an excellent new addition to the Music Product Directory, which allows you to quickly determine which models are in the same price category as the piano you might be considering. The Music Product Directory is the only regularly updated informational publication available in our industry that contains all this information. It is published every six months, Fall and Spring, and the last couple issues have included an increasing number of new brand names; many of which we are just beginning to see in North America (U.S., Canada and Mexico). It is available by subscription, and you can contact Ancott directly for more information. In addition to the Acoustic Piano Edition (which pertains to pianos), Ancott Associates also publishes an Electronic Keyboard Edition, a Computer Edition (for IBM compatible computer keyboard products - which also works on most Macs, because the Mac Operating System can read most DOS system discs, including Windows format) and a Discontinued Keyboards Edition. Piano technicians will probably only use the Acoustic Piano Edition, but store owners, and those who buy and sell or appraise keyboards, will also find it useful (necessary, actually) to have other editions, depending on the area of business they work with. You can contact Ancott Associates at P.O. Box 46532, Cincinnati, Ohio 45246. Their phone is (513) 772-2282. For more information ask to talk to Dan Kobida. Tool of the Month - April 1999 Schaff Piano Supply's new Felt Temperament Strip 209XT This month I want to highlight a small tool - a new felt temperament strip. I have been working with Dave and Herb Johnson at Schaff Piano Supply for a while, trying to get a new - thinner - felt temperament strip. They came up with exactly what I thought was needed, and have now added it to their stock. In addition to their regular felt temperament strip (#209), and their slightly thinner strip (#209T), they have added this new strip - #209XT. The XT stands for Extra Thin, because it is thinner than their other thin temperament strip felt. This new felt temperament strip will work very well with most smaller pianos, such as spinets, consoles and studio uprights, both in the center section and the treble. It will work well in the treble section of most uprights. It will also work in the center sections of most small to medium grands, and in the upper treble sections of most grands, regardless of size. It will be too thin, and allow some bleed-through, in the center section of most 7-9' grands, such as Baldwin SF-10 and SD-10, Mason & Hamlin BB, Steinway Model B and D, and Yamaha C7 and C9 grands, but will work well in the upper sections of these pianos. And speaking of Schaff, they just began shipping their totally brand new 1999 tools and parts catalog! This is not a “redo” of their old catalog, but a totally brand new catalog. They are shipping it to regular customers, but if you do not receive yours in the mail you can contact them for one. Tuning Tip of the Month - March 1999 With the release of the new Sanderson Accu-Tuner III (SAT III), this month's Tuning Tip of the Month is - If you do not have one on order yet, Get Your Order In Now! As you may have heard, there were so many pre-production orders for the SAT III that even though they have been delivering them since late September, technicians ordering today still face an approximate four month wait. We are an Accu-Tuner Dealer, you know, and if you want you can consider this an unabashed promotion, but first let me give you a little information you may not yet have. I have had, and been using, the new SAT III since late last June. When Inventronics announced the coming of the SAT III at the Annual PTG Convention and Technical Institute a year ago they immediately began to get dozens of pre-orders. Intending to have it out in the fall of 1997, its release was held up by two things. First, and most important, Dr. Sanderson became ill, eventually requiring heart bypass surgery, and several months of recouperation. He was in and out of the office during that time, as was Mary. This delayed completion of the programming, and therefore the release of the new SAT III. And second, while the new SAT III was already loaded with new features technicians had been asking for, folks like you and I made a whole bunch of suggestions for added features - and it took additional time (and therefore additional delay) for each of these to be designed and incorporated into the technology. They did not want to release it until it had all the features we were hoping for and expecting. However, all of the 200+ persons who have already received their new SAT III are extremely pleased with the result, despite the delay. We are producing a special video tape demonstrating the use of all the SAT features, including the new features found in the SAT III. It is titled “Using the SAT I, II and III” by Randy Potter, R.P.T., and costs $40. This tape is included with all SAT IIIs ordered through us, or you may also place your order directly with Inventronics. In order to be assured your order is processed properly, and that you will receive your video tape when it is ready, be sure to let them know you are ordering through us, and remember to order Video Tape VT-SIII when you place your order. You can see more information about the SAT III on our web
page. Go back to the Home Page and click on “New and Used
Tuning Devices”. Technical Tip of the Month - March 1999 As piano technicians, we have to work with felt a lot; removing, replacing, cutting, gluing, and so on. I wish to mention to a couple very useful tools I have been using the past couple years. The come from Jerry Cousins of Best Piano Supply in New York. One is their favorite products around our shop is The Chopper, which we use to cut many of the felt products we use for repair and rebuilding projects. Along with a roller cutter, an XACTO knife and Bill Spurlock's damper wedge cutting block, these satisfy just about every felt cutting application we have. And second, I have been using their Sanding Sticks for a couple years. Available in 1/4”, 1/2”, 1” and 2” widths, and in at least three sanding grits (80, 120 and 240), these interchangeable belt sticks are convenient and easy to use. The pointed end works in tight confines, the rounded end works when a softer line is indicated, the long flat side is excellent for sanding keybeds and removing backrail felt, and the small angle on the short side allows extra pressure to be applied when needed. Both these tools, and others, can be purchased from Best Piano Service, Gerry Cousins, R.P.T., 25 Somerset Lane, Putnam Valley, NY 10579. Their phone is (914) 528-1978.
Note: Tips of the Month is a “public service” column, written by Randy Potter, R.P.T.. We do not accept advertising for any of these products, nor do we expect or accept any sort of payment for any item discussed or recommended here. We do accept suggestions for items to evaluate. If you send an item for evaluation, please send return shipping if you would like it returned to you after evaluation period.
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