My reply to Chris's original comment:

Dear Chris,

Here in the USA, arranger keyboards have an entirely different reputation. They are mostly looked upon as toys by serious musicians. We think this is, in part, because they acquired this appellation years ago when they were more toys than musical instruments. Most musicians here today have no idea what these machines can do.

Also, having a group playing here, rather than a "one-man-band" is much more popular. Everyone wants to play guitar and be a rock star! And they need a few guys with backing instruments (drums, keyboard, etc.); but they don't want the keyboard playing to take over the whole show!!!

Arrangers are mostly sold as low end synths in mass merchandise outlets. Actual Musical Instrument Stores don't carry many arrangers. They might have a few middle end PSRs. They rarely would carry the high end 9000/pro.

A lot of players would avoid an arranger even if it had more and better sounding voices and was cheaper than a non-arranger (even if they never intended to use the arranger features apart from those that would be in a "normal" synth) !!!!!!!!! Go Figure!!!

Hopefully all this is changing (I really think it is [slowly] !!!).

I think there is a lot of prejudice here that one is not really making music when you're getting all the built in "helpers" in our arrangers! How silly!

The proof of the matter is the songs submissions we get in our PSR Songs Group. Most of the stuff we just dash off is a heck of a lot better than the sequenced stuff you find on the net (in my opinion). Many of our submissions, especially those where people take the time to multi-track and edit and sequence are real masterpieces that would be hard to match by anyone.

Sure, a very pro guitarist, a great drummer, a top synth player, a real horn, together, are going to ALWAYS sound better than an accordion player trying to do the same on a single instrument (where he/she has no real experience with these other instruments). And, of course, while our PSRs keep getting more realistic voices they may never sound like the "real" instrument (especially acoustic ones).

Still, they really don't deserve the "bad rap" they get here....

Cheers,

Bob