The MZ had a few of them but they were very limited. Still, the concept was good I think and was something to build upon. I see the Yamaha multipads as being "quasi" arps. You can build user ones relatively easilybut they too are a little limited in that you can't change the octave split point. Still, they are a ton better than what was on the3 PA80. The PA80's are somewhat useful when I assign them as realtime controllers, but useless for musical phrases.

The arp function on the Motif ES is more useful to me because you can adjust the way the notes play back simply by adjusting fingering, and you can adjust other parameters on the fly while playing them depending on how they are set up. User arps are easy to do and are useful. The arps can be set up to recognize fingering structure and follow notes in the order you play them, or they can be set up to follow a fixed chord progression, like a piece from an arrange pattern. Drum arps can be set up to play fixed notes. Also arps can be set up without notes and just for effects, such as hammer pulls, bend up or down.. etc. They are very useful to me.

I'd be pretty surprised ( pleasantly I might add ) if any arranger were to feature something similar in the near future.

AJ