ratio?

[ANRPiano@AOL.COM]

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