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When Laura Kunsky was looking for a new career, an aptitude test told her she should consider the poultry industry or work as a landscape architect. But she chose a career about as far removed from those as you can get.

Laura Kunsky is a piano technician.

She was drawn to this career because of her love for the piano, and because she wanted to set her own hours and be home with her children as much as possible.

Kunsky has always had a mechanical aptitude. "I was the person who came to your house for tea, and ended up fixing your cupboard door," she says. "I had an affinity for power tools and things like that. This is a good job for me. It gives me a chance to play with the tools, and I'm doing something really nice. I'm making the world sound better."

Steve Brady, a registered piano technician in Washington state, agrees. "I like working on a piano people are unhappy with -- turning it into a delightful instrument that they can play and enjoy," says Brady. "Most of the rewards are internal -- satisfaction at doing your best work, being able to play the piano yourself when you're finished, meeting interesting people."

Brady, who has been a piano technician for 23 years, says, "The sorry state of most pianos I played was one thing that really spurred me to learn how to tune and repair pianos."

A government program to encourage women to seek nontraditional jobs is what got piano technician Ina Dennekamp into this field.

"I was a musician. I was involved in the piano from a very young age from an artistic point of view. And I was looking for a job that would give me an opportunity to explore the elements of the piano -- what makes a piano a piano."

Dennekamp found a technician who was willing to train her. "He was visually impaired, so I drove him around to different jobs. Then I could watch him tune and bend his ear with questions. So it was kind of a mutual arrangement. He needed me, and I needed him."

Kunsky, Brady and Dennekamp all agree there are a lot of misconceptions about this job. For instance, Brady says one common myth is that only blind people can tune pianos, or that somehow blind tuners are better than sighted ones.

"Of some 10,000 to 12,000 tuners in America, less than one percent are blind," Brady says. "Many of our blind colleagues are fine tuners, but most have difficulty with some other aspects of the piano technician's craft."

Another myth is that "perfect pitch" is necessary to be a good piano tuner. "Not only is it unnecessary, but it often makes it more difficult for a person to learn to tune," says Brady. "People with perfect pitch often have difficulty hearing beats between frequencies, and...these beats...guide piano tuners in the tuning process."

Another misconception is that you need to be a musician to be a piano technician. "You don't have to know how to play the piano to be a first-rate technician. We deal with the sound that eventually makes good music, but we don't deal with music as such. You have to have a good ear, a lot of patience and some time to learn the craft," says Dennekamp.

And that's another misconception -- that this job requires little training. "People think it's something you pick up quickly, get yourself a tuning hammer and book, and spend a couple of weekends working on your piano. Then hang out your shingle. That's really erroneous, because it's a very complicated job. If you're going to do it well, it takes a long time to learn how to do it."

Dennekamp is amused by clients who ask her, "So what do you do for a living?" Many are under the impression that piano tuning is a second job or hobby.

"It isn't something you dabble in. It takes a long time and a lot of study to learn this craft."

Then there are the stories about some of the unusual things people have found inside pianos. Stories abound about piano technicians who have found liquor bottles dating back to the 1920s, and the skeletons of small animals. Kunsky heard about a technician who found a few hundred thousand dollars stashed inside a piano being sold at an estate sale. Of course, the chances of that are pretty slim. "I've never found more than 35 cents!" says Kunsky.

If you had any notions about piano technicians being quiet, mousy types, think again. Dennekamp say successful technicians are self-motivated and organized.

"You have to be an excellent psychologist, because you're dealing with people all the time. To a lot of people, a piano is like a member of the family -- often it's been in the family for years. It's a very personal thing. You've got to know how to deal with people."