How Much do Piano Technicians Earn?

People considering piano technology as a profession often ask piano technicians how much they earn? I certainly get asked that a lot, as you might expect. The answer varies from person to person and area to area, of course, and people are not always willing to be open about their earnings with people they do not know. However, The Jobs Rated Almanac, first published in 1988, took a lot of the “wonder if” out of these questions, answering them with hard, well-researched facts.

I first heard of the book in the summer of 1988, when someone posted a newspaper article on the bulletin board at an PTG Annual Convention. It was clipped from the Los Angeles Times, and was titled “Rating Low-Stress, High Paying Careers“. The article focused on careers with low stress which were also high paying. Of the top eight they discussed in the article, Piano Tuner was number two, with an average  income (in 1987) of $43,600.  It was second only to actuary, with an average annual income of $45,780. Of those eight top “low stress, high pay” professions, piano tuning was the only one that did not require at least a bachelors degree. Many of the jobs required graduate degrees, most a doctorate degree.

My interest was sparked. Later, while in Indiana to attend the Kimball University, one of our graduates, Bill Mills of Kent, WA (now retired) dragged me into a bookstore.  After I found a handful of books I could not live without, I found The Jobs Rated Almanac and searched out a number of occupations to use as comparisons. Here are some of the results I think potential students, current students, and technician-friends alike will appreciate seeing:

The US Department of Labor recognizes over 5,000 occupations, of which the authors selected 250 to be highlighted in the book. They chose many of the most common jobs, but also thought it would be useful to select many of the most “visible” jobs, even though they  represented only a small part of the work force, and some because they considered them especially interesting or desirable. Some of these are astronaut, cowboy, disc jockey, professional athlete, race car driver – and piano tuner.

The wage figures (again, from 1987) were gathered about 80% from the federal government (The Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau), and 20% from a variety of sources such as labor unions, trade associations and management consulting firms.  I found it interesting to compare several currently popular occupations. I have collated some of the information from The Jobs Rated Almanac. I hope you find it interesting.

* Explanation of Adjusted Rates:

The information for the Jobs Rated Almanac, published early in 1988, was gathered from 1987 sources. In 1987 (and 1988) we were charging $45 for a standard tuning. Since that time we have had several price increases (as have all other industries as well).  Tuning and repair rates we were charging in 1988 were about the median of the national average at the time – as we are now. As the cost of living has risen over time we gradually increased our tuning rates for a standard tuning.

The current prices used are reflective of the current average rates charged in most of America. In the US in 2015, as I am revising these numbers, the average rates for a standard tuning are running in the $95-110 range. We have used the $100 tuning rate to calculate the “Starting” earnings here. For the Average and Top rates we have used $110. In our business in Central Oregon, our standard tuning rates vary from $100 – $125 (depending on the technician providing the tuning). Many technician friends in Oregon and Southwest Washington have been charging in the $145-150 for several years. Had I chosen to use the $125 tuning fee I personally charge the “Top” income would have been about $182,000.

While some technicians earn less than these projections, others earn much more. There are many factors that go into the make-up of earnings in any business, which students learn while studying our course. (In addition to the business section of our course, which by itself has more material than other schools’ whole course, there is additional business information included in the tuning, repairing and regulating sections of our course.)

About one-fourth of the “students” taking our course are already piano technicians. These technicians have often been working in the field for 10, 20, and in some cases over 30, years and take our course for the purpose of upgrading their tuning, repairing, regulating and business operations skills, and also increasing their income. We call them “Continuing Education Students”. In the late 1990’s we surveyed technicians who had taken our course as CE Students, and learned that these technicians, on average, had increased their incomes by more than $20,000 a year after completing our course!  Because prices for a standard tuning are more than double today what they were then, we can expect that technicians taking the CE Course today will increase their incomes by $40,000+ a year.

Some of the reasons for this are that our course has more training material, and is more complete, than any other course every published – in the past or currently. The written material in course, including our main course training manual (over 1,000 pages by itself), and the 11 auxiliary texts, plus other printed materials, means the complete course includes more than 2,500 total pages of training material. In addition there are six, two-hour training DVDs, including, tuning, repairing and regulating training.

At the 2006 PTG Annual Convention in Rochester, NY, one of our graduates came to me and said while he had been tuning part-time for nearly 8 years, he decided to quit his day job (as a federal fire fighter), and tune pianos full-time. The prior year had been his first full year as a full-time piano technician. He had earned $113,000. He gave me his name, and said I could tell it to anyone who wanted to contact him. I thanked him for the information, and for allowing others to call and verify it.  At the following year’s PTG Annual Convention, this same technician came to me and reminded me that he had earned $113,000 in the prior year as his first full-time year as a piano technician – and said he had earned $141,000 that year. I asked him if he was able to still have time for his wife and three daughters, and he said he did, and appreciated that he could attend all their school programs now, because of the ability to adjust his own schedule.

Will I Earn Money While Studying the Course?

Another question I am frequently asked is “How long does it take to finish the course?” I usually respond something like this: “I think you are really asking two different questions, so I will give you both answers.

The course is designed to be completed in 6-12 months by someone studying about two hours a day, five days a week. Class is “In Session” whenever you open the course notebook, any of the 11 auxiliary texts, or the piano manufacturers technical service manuals or pianos brochures, or slide one of the six, 2-hour DVDs into your DVD player. So if you are sleepless some night you can get up and start reading, or watching, piano tuning, repairing, regulating, or even study the business practices section.

Some students have a schedule that allows them to complete the course in less than six months (not many, but a few), and others take much longer than one year. This is one of the benefits of home study – if life takes a turn for a while, because of work (new job, promotion, job loss), family (marriage, birth of children, whatever) or environmental changes (several students have paused their studies for a while when hurricanes or tornadoes hit their homes and displaced them). With home study you can always suspend your studies for a while, and get back to it when it works best for you. We have a lady who works with us in our piano service business who got the course, started, put it away for 10 years while she raised her three daughters and got a college teaching degree, then returned to the course – and has been working for us as a piano technician ever since.

The other question potential students are asking, though, is “when will I be able to begin earning money servicing pianos?”

Many of our students are beginning to do some tuning and work for pay within three to four months of beginning the course. (A few are able to begin a little sooner, others take longer, of course.) It is not uncommon for students to tell me they earned between $10-20,000 in their first year (first 12 months from the day they opened their course materials box), while still working their 40-hour a week “day job”.  And it is not uncommon for students to tell me they earned between $20-40,000 in their second year.

This is possible because our course is put together in a practical way, so students can begin tuning and servicing pianos for pay as quickly as possible.

Randy Potter, RPT
June 2015