[pianotech] Are we fading?

[David Boyce]

No, I make no such assumption.

However, it is a sound general principle that as manufacturing of a 
given product (like ships) diminishes in a given land, then associated 
traning for jobs in manufacturing/servicing that product, will *diminish*.

Is it not fair, and true, to say so, as a general rule?

Why else is there now no marine plumbing being tought in my college, 
where 25 years ago, 600 a year came through the place learning that?  
It's because there is almost no shipbuilding here any longer.

In Scotland, as in the rest of the UK, the situation is similar to that 
in the USA, as I have said on this list before. I was perfectly aware of 
what Ed was referring to. Anyone here, as in the USA, can set himself of 
herself up as a piano technician. The trade/profession has no statutory 
regulation.

I know of the courses in the USA, including the correspondence courses, 
and I met Randy Potter in the 1980s at a PTA Convention. 

While the piano manufacturing and ancillary service trades, and 
associated traning, are not quite as low as in the UK, would it be 
correct to say that in the USA, and probably Canada and Western Europe, 
the general downward direction is the same?

What I am interested in, and tried (evidently unnsuccessfully) to convey 
in my post, was not that training will STOP, but that there is an 
interesting discussion to be had around what form it will take and how 
it will be provided.

Best regards,

David Boyce.


> David
>  
> You are taking the assumption that just because there are no 
> manufactures, that the training will stop. Perhaps in England, in 
> order to become a piano tuner, one must take a college course or be 
> trained in a factory. But in the USA, any one can become a piano tuner 
> without proper education. That's what Ed was referring to. But there 
> are some school offering piano tuning, and there are a couple of 
> correspondences courses, with Randy's being the best.
>  
> But even when manufacturing stops, or comes to a dismal trickle, as in 
> the USA, there will always be a need for service of the remaining 
> instruments, not to mention the new ones, even if they come from 
> Asia. What has been happening in this country for a long time, though, 
> as the manufacturing jobs went elsewhere, the service industry has 
> been gaining jobs. We might not have the proper training as we used 
> to, there is still a significant amount of training going on, in both 
> the private sector, and by the PTG, with seminars and conventions.
>  
> Wim
>  
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