From my past experience of repairing player pianos, reproducers, and
other automatic pianos since the first one in 1949, I would strongly
advise anyone interested in working on player pianos on a professional
basic start out by learning the piano technician trade.

For many years I worked on the player actions only and would often find
that I had lost a rebuild or repair job because of some piano technician
advising the piano owner the remove the player action.  On many of those
instances where I got the job and did a quality restoration of the
player unit, the piano still needed the work of a qualified technician
to make it sound proper.

I took the William Braid White piano technician course as I wanted to be
taught by what I considered the best.  That was one of the best moves I
made in music.  I can make a quite satisfactory income by tuning only if
necessary and when coupled with rebuilding a player I can make it sound
quite satisfactory.

In addition, I often would get good leads on interesting pianos as a
result of my tuning activities.

Although there are no other player technicians that I know of in the
area I would hate to have to make a living on working only on players.

For what it's worth,

Hal Davis