<html> <body> At 06:04 AM 12/3/2006, Jim Bryant wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">Duaine; Maybe I am missing something from your post. Are you advocating the addition of categories such as RPPPT and RROT ? :-) When an organization or an individual attempts to be all things to all people it inevitably becomes less of each. PTG does a good job with the RPT thingee and does it better than any other organiozation for piano techs that I am aware of. I believe that there are forums for pneumatics and reed organs and perhaps they offer some type of testing/recognition...I don't know for sure because I don't work on these thingees. My thoughts on a cool , cloudy, misty sunday morning in Florida. Jim Bryant (FL) </blockquote> Jim, Duane At various time and in various discussions - on the PTG-L list, by the way, which is where this sort of thing belongs - the idea of creating franchised categories for piano sub-specialties had been received quite sympathetically. It most often comes up in connection with piano rebuilders. The only hangup is that to date nobody has made a serious attempt at devising an objective exam to test for skills in such areas - or even made a list of skills to be tested for. Somehow when people bring up the idea, they expect "the PTG" (whoever that might be) to devise an exam for them. The problem is that only the practitioners of such a sub-specialty within the piano craft are capable of devising such an exam - and yes, it would be a huge undertaking. But then, so was the development and refinement of the current PTG tuning and technical exams. I have often suggested that if subspecialties were interested in developing a franchised status within the framework of the PTG they would begin by forming a caucus within the PTG - similar to the CAUT caucus - and work on developing an alternate path to franchised membership through testing for their particular skills. As they say, there is no free lunch... Israel Stein </body> </html>