Do you guys think Yamaha's price hikes are helping or hurting them? I'm curious to know why Yamaha jacked their prices to begin with too. I would assume Yammie played a business game to boost sales PRIOR to the price hike.., which would makes sense as to why it was so HEAVILY announced. Scare eveyone into buying the gear before the prices go up..., and I'm sure that worked for them to some degree

However.., I've been noticing something lately. I'm going to use one of Yamaha's budget workstations as an example. For a while you could get a Yamaha MO6 and a Roland Juno G for the same price. I'm not going to argue sound quality as that's so subjective and I don't think we can beat that old horse to death anymore than we already have. However.., in terms of features the Juno G is clearly a mile or two ahead of the MO in this area (not sure if you guys know but the Juno G is s sampling workstation now with the latest software update). Yamaha hasn't added ANYTHING to the MO line that compares to the Juno's software updates yet. It's just that I've noticed some places have increased the cost of the MO6 up to $1,099 (although you can still find it for $999 in some places).., but with Roland's deals you still get a more feature packed Juno G for less).

Not long ago they were both essentially the same price..., the Juno did a few more things.., but they went for the same price. When Yamaha did the price jack it then put the lesser featured packed MO6 at $100 more than the Juno G. Now Roland has a special that puts the Juno G $200 under the MO6. I could be wrong.., as I can't remember for sure if the MO line was or was not part of Yammie's price increase.., but I have noticed some online retialers have increased the MO's by at least $100. Perhaps they're getting a bit greedy too

Anyone else think Yamaha's maybe going in the wrong direction? They jack prices of gear that's been out for a while. Companies like Korg was dropping prices. Roland did a price jack on the Fantom.., but that was while ago too.

What do you guys think? Does it make sense for Yamaha to be jacking prices of gear that's been out for a while? I wonder if they're going to use the price jacks to set a bar for their next releases to be priced even higher. Kinda softening the blow to the consumer. Get everyone used to the jacked prices where they are now and when the new gear is released the price increase on that may not look as large since they increased price on current lines.



[This message has been edited by squeak_D (edited 05-15-2009).]