Lets look at this closer, Bill. We still have animal skins stretched over wooden frames (drums), I think guitars have been around for a couple centuries or so, I clearly recall reading about flutes being carved from hollowed out, wooden sticks about the same time man discovered fire. Around 1400-1413 the earliest known S-shaped trumpet was developed, which was later followed by the folded trumpet and slide trumpet. It was out of the slide trumpet that the trombone developed around 1450. The violin, viola, and cello were first made in the early 16th century, in Italy. The earliest evidence for their existence is in paintings by Gaudenzio Ferrari from the 1530s, though Ferrari's instruments had only three strings. Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann is often cited as the inventor of the harmonica in 1821, but other inventors developed similar instruments at the same time. The Greek engineer Ctesibius of Alexandria is credited with inventing the organ in the 3rd century BC. He devised an instrument called the hydraulis, which delivered a wind supply maintained through water pressure to a set of pipes. The hydraulis was played in the arenas of the Roman Empire.

Bill, all of these instruments are still in existence today in one form or another, and will be around long after we are both dead and buried. Same goes for the arranger keyboard. It's just another new, and often exciting, musical instrument. To my knowledge, NO musical instrument has gone by the wayside. And, there are still at least three major retailers in my part of the world that sell those very expensive home organs and they sell a lot of them. Every musical instrument has a niche, with no exceptions. My song loves to play his solid body guitar, though at times he will sit down at the PSR-3000 I gave him and use it for a drum machine while playing the guitar.

Bill, do you still play an arranger keyboard? If so, why?

Cheers,

Gary