I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with this picture: I've been seriously shopping for a Yamaha 9000 Pro lately and will likely buy one of the ones that have been posted here for sale. In the course of shopping I contacted several national music stores like Sweetwater Sound and Mars Music and they tell me that they don't stock the 9KPro but will special order it. They say they haven't been selling, and Sweetwater told me it's a 4-6 week factory backorder currently because of cutbacks in production. No local music stores in my area have ever carried the 9KPro and never will they say because it's too expensive. Even the Keyboard Magazine review of Oct/2001 openly said the 9KPro was way too expensive, which couldn't have helped sales any. And lately there have been a number of them for sale used, which I didn't expect to see until the next generation of the 9kPro came out. Why are so many people selling their 9kPros if that's the best arranger keyboard Yamaha currently makes?

Now I've seen the discussions here about the new Yamaha Tyros due out this fall which supposedly will cost less than the 9KPro, albeit there only seems to be a 61-note model pictured so far (a 76-note version in late '03?), but that "Tyros" name worries me... didn't someone say that means "beginner"? So did Yamaha overestimate the market with the 9000 Pro and decide that maybe they should strip down that flagship and offer cheaper versions with less features as often happens... or shall we say, with more features that will appeal to less-than-pro customers like the Tyros' color display? Personally, I'd like to see it go with even more pro features like digital outputs for recording, but that doesn't appear to be part of the Tyros' specs. Is the concept of the pro arranger keyboard doomed? Just my rumblings but I would like to hear other thoughts on this...