Squeak,

Why bring professional arrangers into this discussion?
Arrangers have always cost more than workstations,as the the amount of programming involved with all of the extra accompaniments & such,increases the production costs.

In the case of the Tyros 3,just take a look at the elaborate interface and the size of the screen,as that effects the pricing dramatically.

Think about your speculative price tag in terms of marketing in a logical way...most Casio users either don't have the wallet or the means to justify spending a grand on a high end consumer grade keyboard.

If Casio is actually dilusional enough to slap a $1,000 price tag on the WK-7500, then two things will happen....it won't sell,the price will be dramatically lowered and it will be discontinued after a couple of years.

In order for the WK-7500 to appeal to the average Casio user,the price must be well under a $1,000 and for the 7500 to appeal to the more serious musician,the 7500 would have to be imbued with all of the features of the old MZ-2000,along with all of the current features of the 7500.

Bottom line,is that the WK-7500 would have to closely compete with the Korg M50,which it does not.

As for Casio completely redesigning a keyboard,it does not account for much in terms of production costs,as Casio as a whole,is an enormous company that manufactures everything from watches to cameras.
That being said,Casio has plenty of capitol to invest in research and development,without being adversely affected by it,in the least.

Casio simply has not put a $1,000 worth of features into the WK-7500,as a 240 X 80 display screen,64 note polyphony,synth action keys,2 send effects and audio recording is pretty standard in a budget workstation.
Bear in mind also,that you have no idea,the amount of WAV ROM in the WK-7500,as Casio does not reveal such info.
The old Alesis QS8 sample based synth,only had 16MB of ROM-and yet,they managed to squeeze 600 sounds out of it,so the 800 tones of the WK-7500,may not necessarily amount to much,in terms of actual ROM content.
As mentioned here already in this thread,a lot of the functions of the WK-7500 are menu-driven,which means less physical controls,thereby less cost in terms of production.


-Elwood