Squeak,

$1400 is in the budget range of the PRO arena of keyboards.
Every pro keyboard company has their budget range of pro keyboards,but it does not necessarily mean that they're semi-pro.

Yes,Yamaha has the widest range of keyboards...everything from the highest grade of pro,all the way down to consumer grade.
However though,a keyboard like the Yamaha M06,is derived from Yamaha's old flagship ES series,so it is considered a pro board,but in the budget range.

Consider this also,the Korg M1 only had 4MB of sounds,an 8 track sequencer,1 insert effect and only 16 voices of polyphony,but it used to be Korg's flagship workstation,so technically it was, & still is,a pro board.

Classifications in workstations these days,are a bit subjective...like for example,the Korg MicroStation is well under a $1,000 and it has some pro level features in terms of recording,but a lot of the sounds are terrible and are what I consider to be consumer grade.
Korg has begun to scale down their workstations so much,that I don't know what to call the MiscroStation exactly...maybe a budget level semi-pro board?

All I know about Korg definitively,is that Korg has never made consumer grade keyboards and that you'll never find a Korg keyboard in a Wal-Mart.

Oddly enough though,some Best Buy stores have a pro instrument department in them...very strange.

Casio-in the last ten years,has begun to blur the line a bit, between consumer-grade, semi-pro and pro,but if Casio ends up improving the WK-7500 beyond the MZ-2000 in terms of sounds & the amount insert effects,then I would consider the WK-7500 a professional budget keyboard and it would be worthy of a $1400 price tag.

20 years ago,yes...I would agree with you that $1400 is not a pro level price range,but currently,it is.


-Elwood

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[This message has been edited by elwoodblues1969 (edited 10-04-2010).]

[This message has been edited by elwoodblues1969 (edited 10-04-2010).]