Many of you are familiar with mix magazine. It is geared toward professionals in the field of audio and music production. Like most magazines they have been forced by to establish an online presence in the face of the near certain demise of print media in the coming years. I have become a fan of their online version at http://mixonline.com/. For those of you that are interested solely in the repair and maintenance of audio and studio equipment there is a recurring feature called Tech's Files that deals with wide ranging topics related to the care and upkeep of professional audio and musical gear. They frequently come up with useful nuggets and tips.

The most recent installment Tech's Files: Servicing Vintage Audio Gear raises a serious question. This short piece gives a few useful pieces of advice. And while the target audience for this magazine and the article are highly technical professionals many (if not most) of them are not trained in electronics as the closing paragraph acknowledges:

Two of my daughters bought me a subscription to Netflix for father's day. I have made heavy use of it in the last month and discovered a number of gems. One that may be of interest to many of you is a documentary lasting one hour and 21 minutes which follows the progress of a Steinway Concert Grand serial number L1037 as it makes it's year long journey through the Steinway piano factory. One of 2000 pianos that Steinway makes annually, we witness the extensive and meticulous hand labor that goes into the making of one of these masterpieces. Starting at $25,000 dollars and with essentially no upper limit these pianos are made in the exact same process that they have been built for the last 100 years.

Individual craftsmen, representing every continent on the planet, describe their particular contribution to the process. With no automation, and rarely even a power tool, every piece of the piano is hand fabricated and assembled, many steps requiring a full days labor by individual craftsmen. The process culminates in 4 chip tunes, a rough tune, a fine tune and then the final voicing process all done by ear, no computer tuning allowed.