There has been a lot said lately about the price of arranger keyboards. Is it worth upgrading? Is it worth the money?
Let's look at it from another perspective.
Fifteen years ago, just after "graduating" from organs, I had a top-of-the-line Yamaha arranger (PSR6100 maybe?) As I recall it cost around $1500.
In order to use it, I had to midi it to an external drum machine ($500.) I used a DX7 and a piano module for most of the sounds ($2,000 + $400). I used a Yamaha processor (SPX90) and a midi foot controller to assign pitch-shifts to do vocal harmony, before Digitech came out with the Vocalist. You had to assign each midi button to an interval (third, fourth, fifth). This was another $800. I used a compressor/limiter on the vocals ($400.) I used an external graphic equalizer ($300.) Then you had to have external effects. I used two units, one for reverb another for delay. ($$600.) Then you needed all the cables and racks to assemble this. Then you had to transport it. Setup time was an hour, if you were fast. Forget upgrades. You just lived with what you had and bought something new if you wanted to upgrade.
All this added up to close to $7000. Even this was a savings over what you had to have in the B3/Rhodes days.
Now, the lowly PSR2000 has ALL of these features, plus many more (including sequencer) for a measly $1100. or so.
You can buy top of the line arrangers for a third of what I paid for all this gear, and they include sequencers and samplers and much more.
Arranger keyboards are the biggest bargain in the music industry, in my opinion.
Sure I wish they were less, but I think they are a wonderful value.
DonM