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Cooks and knives are a bad example, because sharpening knives is easy. I am not a cook and sharpen mine too. It takes like 15 minutes to learn how to do it, and a similar time to actually do it.

Most piano players don't have a clue about how to tune their pianos, though.

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Oddly enough, pianists not knowing how to tune a piano is an anomaly in the music world, as most other artists know their instruments inside and out. The Times did a piece on this just the other day: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/12/arts/music/piano-tuning.h...

It is not binary in my experience.

Most professional musicians know their instrument very well - and still know a man for the "hard" stuff, e.g. for thorough maintenance or repairs that require craftsmanship.

And there are obviously variants. The guys that fix their instruments regularly and experiment with e.g. cooking your stings, and musicians that hand them in for the tiniest, easiest tasks.

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