Hammer, you seem pretty sure of yourself that arrangers will disappear one day i.e. "When" Arrangers Go away as opposed to "If" Arrangers go away.

In fairness I think arranger technology will continue to further meld into workstations and we see evidence of that with the Motif XS/XF arpeggiators and the new Korg KRONOS beat maker, etc. In fact the Korg Pa3X has many 'workstation' features on it making it essentially a 'workstation' with full blown arranger functionality. But I digress...

If arrangers disappeared from the planet as of today - thank God they won't though - then I would probably spring for a Korg KRONOS because of its SSD hard drive streaming capability making the Motif XF look childish by comparison. 12 GB of data can be stored on the KRONOS hard drive which is always there when you power it up essentially leap-frogging the Yamaha Motif XF considerably. It's also included in the price of the KRONOS from what I understand whereas the Yammie XF are flash memory "add-on" boards you have to pay extra for. The KRONOS also has 9 synth engines with all the top of the line Korg synthesis technology built in. You can also play along with rhythm patterns that are also included. Plus expansion capability plus many other cutting edge features and technologies besides the nice big high resolution touch screen LCD display. If the $3,500 price tag holds up for the 88 key version it will be a veritable steal in my opinion. The WAV ROM expansion boards are an additional cost but that's to be expected. The KRONOS should be a HUGE seller no doubt and kudos to Korg for bringing real excitement back into the workstation keyboard market once again.

BTW Fran. The XP80 is out of production and therefore it might be rather difficult finding one used. It was a great keyboard during its time though. Not to fret though because Arrangers are going to be around for quite a while in my opinion. Yammie's T4 and now Korg's new PaX3 fresh off the assembly line tells you that manufacturers still see arrangers as a viable market. I continue to think that workstations will keep adding arranger features and functions to them down the road. We'll see.

KRONOS has my vote though if arrangers no longer existed. Brand new with bleeding edge technology... and it's got a factory warranty to boot. Can't say that about the now obsolete and out of production XP80 unfortunately.

All the best,
Mike