Orange Slices: One string at a time

Piano technician takes pride in his work in the Ansdell Piano Warehouse in Anaheim.

He carefully lays out the 88 piano hammers one-by-one on his shop bench. He methodically separates them into groups and draws a mental picture of his task at hand. Today, piano technician Brian Sheridan is restoring an 1898 Ivers and Pond upright piano for a customer.

Sheridan represents a rare breed. Probably as rare as some of the pianos he works on. His father and his father's father were and are piano technicians.

He remembers helping his father replace felts when he was 5 years old for 50 cents and a can of pop. He restrung his first piano when he was only 12.

He cares.

The 31-year-old Westminster resident is sanding and painting a tension bar that will be deep inside the piano and will likely never be seen by anyone again except for possibly another technician. "Even though nobody is really going to see it, I am still going to see it." He says.

He knows about such things as cap stands, jack springs, butt flanges, birds eyes, nose bolts, dampers, bridal tapes, tuning pins, tension bars, nose bolts, string hooks, pin extractors, hammers and lyres. And he knows one note emanating from a piano involves, on average, 104 moving parts.

As he quietly labors in the back of the cramped Ansdell Piano Warehouse in Anaheim, he says he hopes one day to take over his dad's business when he retires. Until then they repair pianos one string at a time.

"I don't feel that my job is really in jeopardy," he says. "You still gotta have hands to do the job. No machine will take that away."