In a message dated 4/21/00 1:27:53 AM Central Daylight Time, prescottpiano@juno.com writes: << I have a 1997 statement from Terry Lewis, a vice president of Yamaha that estimates that there were at least 17 million used pianos in the US. If the population is aproximately 220 million that is 7.7% of the population. Larry Messerly RPT Prescott/Phoenix >> I have heard of this statement. I believe it might be low but nevertheless we can use it. But since then about 1/4 million new piano have been sold according to The Music Trades and the US population is a whole lot closer to 275 million. The result is about 6.3% of the population has a piano. If there are 2.2 people in a household that brings us to 13.8% of the households in the US have a piano. I have heard estimates of between 9000 and 13000 piano tuners in the US. My guess is a lot of these are part timers so lets use the round number of 10000 tuners. Which means each of us are responsible for 1725 pianos more or less. Add to this the average age is probably 50 years and one out of 200 needs to be rebuilt with an average of 100 hours. Not to mention all the regulating, repairs, and partial rebuilding which the fleet of US pianos so desperately needs at this time. I had someone ask me yesterday if there was enough work in this field to do it full time. Severely overworked Andrew Remillard
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