Yes, arranger keyboards did have rather humble beginnings...I remember seeing the early Casio and Yamaha instruments with all of 10 rhythms and just as many sounds. However, no matter how you look at it, the "FUN" factor was very high, and the instruments really took off in a monstrous growth spurt.

For me, I'm glad to have been able to follow (and be relatively deeply involved in) their journey to the awesome keyboards they are today, and I'm also glad to be using a predominately hardware based instrument with lots of physical buttons and sliders and knobs and no touch screen.

It still makes me smile when I play it.

One thing arrangers have that workstations do not...immediacy.

Ian