Full-on noob here. First post, but been making records, playing music, and fixing gear for 20 years. Oliver, I met you and Josh at the TAB booth at AES-NY last year. Howzit?
I know for a fact there are skilled techs out there, but I think the ones that are really "getting it" as far as working on and/or developing analog circuits in the digital age are not going to be tech's only. They are likely musicians, studio owners, producers, modders, or a combination, who got lucky enough at some point to have a chance to learn and practice the art, to the point where they got skilled.
Which is great, but it's not the sort of broad-based skill set as it was before. It's a similar situation as learning to play jazz, where it used to be a popular music that was in the air, and people learned how to play it because it was the dominant musical language of the day, not because it was a historical art form. Does that make sense? You can still generate very talented folks, geniuses even, but it's different approach now, when it's a conscious goal, as opposed to when analog electronics was simply the "way it gets done."