Substantial Changes Made to Musical Instrument Making and Repair Courses

17th December 2025

The AMA played a key role in making significant changes to two qualifications for Musical Instrument Making and Repair, which will reduce the barrier to creating accredited training for brass and woodwind technicians in Australia. While training of this kind is not currently provided, the structural changes and details included in the new version of the course outline are an important step towards a potential training solution. 

About the Qualifications

Two qualifications, contained in the same course document, have been reviewed and reaccredited as part of the usual 5 year review process. The new accredited courses 22704VIC Certificate III in Musical Instrument Making and Maintenance, and 22703VIC Certificate IV in Musical Instrument Making and Repair, will take effect from 1st January 2026. The words ‘Maintenance’ and ‘Repair’ differentiate between the Cert III and IV courses, we sometimes use a general term to refer to the courses overall.

The AMA has been involved for many years in advocating for these qualifications to be maintained, and has been part of the Project Steering Committee (PSC) reviewing the qualifications.

There is currently a single Registered Training Organisation delivering these courses, NCAT in Melbourne. The course is advertised as ‘Guitar Making’ and the delivery focuses on making and repairing guitars, but the qualification itself is not limited to guitar making and repair.

Over a decade ago, in April 2015, the AMA shared news that “The association has successfully led an industry lobby for the reinstatement of Cert III & IV qualifications in Musical Instrument Making and Repair” in Victoria after it was discontinued as a national qualification.

During the course of the 2025 review, AMA CEO Alex Masso proposed an overhaul of the content and structure as it relates to brass and wind instruments. Theoretically there has always been a pathway through these qualifications for a brass & wind technicians, but it has not been used in a vocational training environment for trainee Brass and Woodwind Technicians.

A number of technicians and other stakeholders were consulted and assisted with the wording of these changes. Special thanks to Cal Barry from The Music Place for his work on Performance Evidence for brass & woodwind repair units.

There are three kinds of changes in the new version, compared to its predecessor:

1. Tidying up

Several words and meanings were changed or clarified in the new document, in many cases not creating a practical change but making the document clearer. There are specific units based on repair, maintenance, making or manufacturing musical instruments, for specific instruments, such as ‘Manufacture Electric Guitars’ and ‘Repair Brass Instruments’. These units are structural similar but contain different details, and they allow an individual to study different combinations of these units.

Many of the instrument category descriptions now have added details, such as specifying trumpets (piston valves), French horns (rotary valves) and trombones (slides) in the brass units, One category was renamed from ‘special stringed instruments’ to ‘traditional stringed instruments’, providing greater clarity for a sub-category that includes banjos, mandolins, and many stringed instruments from other cultures that are now bowed stringed instruments or guitars. Bass guitars are now specifically mentioned as part of the guitar units, rather than being implied.

The review clarified some language around repairing and finishing surfaces, and obsolete units were removed. 

2. Additional detail

The reaccredited courses introduce more detail, particularly in performance evidence, to improve consistency, transferability, and assessment integrity. Many units now specify minimum numbers of instruments or tasks, for example “brass repair requiring repairs to at least three brass instrument types and completion of at least nine specified repair tasks”.

Performance evidence now includes explicit task lists, which in some cases have been substantially changed. In particular, the lists of skills and tasks for brass and wind repair units were completely rewritten to better reflect training programs for technicians, and industry expectations. The AMA consulted with professionals (brass and wind technicians, from Victoria where the course is accredited) and the US-based professional association NAPBIRT, to provide and check new detail for those units.

3. Structural changes

The reaccreditation introduces deliberate structural changes to allow flexibility for training pathways focusing on different instrument categories. The qualification has been delivered successfully for decades as a guitar-based course, where other instrument groups can be (and are) covered under the existing structure. There are several major challenges in delivering accredited training for instrument makers and repairers in other instrument categories, some of these are less challenging under the new course outline.

The emphasis on ‘making’ or ‘manufacturing’ is a major challenge for brass and wind instruments. Unlike guitars, it is not typical for individuals to make these instruments themselves by hand, and it is vanishingly rare in Australia to find an instrument maker working with these instruments. ‘Making’ cannot be removed from the qualification, because it is one of two parts that are fundamental to the course structure and the title. The ‘making’ or ‘manufacturing’ units are based on ‘assembly’ units from other manufacturing units, and part of the process involves the assembly of a musical instrument and fabrication of certain parts. In a guitar making environment, the body would be ‘made’ while other ‘parts’ are purchased and included in the instrument assembly. Woodwind instruments for example are not generally fabricated in Australia from beginning to end, but those instruments are stripped and reassembled as part of the repair process, and this forms part of a typical training process for technicians.

Two changes in particular allow for greater flexibility in establishing accredited training for brass and woodwind technicians, or perhaps luthiers (bowed stringed instruments), based on this qualification.

  • Nominal hours for several brass and woodwind units have been changed to support a course structure that can emphasise repair and servicing, rather than manufacture. The nominal hours for brass and woodwind ‘manufacturing’ units were far higher than the equivalent units for guitar, reflecting the complexity of the task but creating a strong emphasis on those units that is not reflected in typical training for technicians. Reducing the nominal hours for ‘manufacturing’ units and increasing them for ‘repair’ units shifts the balance to repair, in line with industry expectations. 

  • The number of mandatory List A units involving “making” an instrument has been reduced from two to one. This is crucial and creates two opportunities

    • A brass and woodwind technician pathway, based on this qualification, could contain one unit that involves ‘making’ an instrument, rather than two. Having two mandatory units from List A would require either both categories (woodwind and brass) to be covered from a ‘manufacturing’ perspective, or separate instrument types (such as guitars, percussion instruments) being included, diluting the focus on brass and woodwind instruments. Under the new packaging rules, combined with the change in nominal hours, the balance of emphasis on ‘manufacturing’ has changed substantially to allow a repair-focused pathway. 

    • An orchestral stringed instrument pathway, based on this qualification, could contain a single manufacturing unit focusing on that instrument category, without needing to also ‘make’ another instrument type. Two repair units, which would include a different product category, would need to be included under the List B (repair units) rules.

The Project Steering Committee for the review included Patrick Evans (Chair) (Maton Guitars), Alex Masso (Australian Music Association), Bon Nardella (Northern College of the Arts and Technology), Gary Rizzolo (Rizzolo Guitars), and Raffaella Galati-Brown (Northern College of the Arts and Technology), working with Teresa Signorello (Executive Officer, CMM, Building Industries).

In summary, many of the changes provide subtle but meaningful clarity to guide Registered Training Organisations in how to deliver the qualification, while others create the flexibility to offer specialisations in different instrument categories.

What next?

The AMA is well aware of the challenge of maintaining a supply of quality instrument technicians across all categories, particularly piano tuners and technicians (not addressed here), luthiers, and brass and wind technicians. The adjustments made to the qualification are significant but do not yet solve the problem.

The period of accreditation is five years, it will be reviewed in 2030 for the next five years. Any new traineeship or course structure established for instrument making and repair other than guitars, if it can be established before 2030, could use this qualification.

Creating accredited training in Australia would require the cooperation of an RTO, industry/employers, experienced technicians, and new trainees, and cannot be achieved by the AMA or any other party alone. That work will continue now that the qualification has been approved.

Quick Questions

Does this affect the guitar making course running at NCAT? 

Yes and no. The NCAT course in Victoria is the only accredited training for musical instrument makers and repairers. It focuses on guitars, responding to the demand of both trainees and the industry. There are a number of changes to the qualification that will apply to the NCAT course, but the greater clarity provided in the document is effectively already used as part of the clear interpretation of the course outline by NCAT.

The structural changes and detail relating to brass and woodwind instruments are unlikely to have any effect on the delivery of the current NCAT course.

Will training be available now for brass and wind techs?

Not yet. At the moment there is no RTO actively developing a training solution for brass and wind techs. However, if that were to happen in the next five years, the RTO could use this qualification.

Is this qualification only available in Victoria?

No, it is registered in Victoria (rather than being a nationally accredited training package) but can be used in other states and territories.

Would this allow a course to be offered that is similar to American brass and wind technician courses?

It depends. The structure of Australian vocational training is different, we did look at how US courses are structured and could not replicate the model directly. You could say that the fundamental purpose of training, to develop core skills required by technicians and have them assessed, is available in this course just as it is covered in different ways around the world.

Could a traineeship / apprenticeship be offered, using this qualification?

Yes, but there is some work to do before this could be implemented in Australia. A Certificate IV qualification is an appropriate vehicle for a traineeship in a vocational skill such as Musical Instrument Making and Repair, but an RTO would need to be involved.

Why make all the changes, if they are not being implemented by an RTO?

The opportunity for review only comes up every five years. We hear about the challenge of training brass and wind technicians frequently, and sought an opportunity to create a training pathway.

References