Compared to the demand for things like the current Roland synth lines, the arranger market is a rapidly diminishing drop in the ocean. We live in a tiny bubble, and demand for a discontinued product might seem high, but in truth it’s just a few hardcore users.

The fact that the few BK9’s that hit the used market are highly sought after simply reflects how poorly it sold during the production run, and how Roland never brought out a successor. And it seems like most who are looking at one at the moment are doing it more out of curiosity than an acknowledgment of how superior it is in many regards. You don’t really find that out until you use it.

And, as a pure ‘arranger’, it still fails to check off some of the boxes… Roland have stubbornly refused to add a break/fill or multipads despite decades of requests. You can use the Key Audio as a reasonable substitute for multipads for percussion and breakbeat loops, but its inability to chord follow cripples it compared to regular MIDI multipads.

If my entire show revolved around arranger play, I doubt I’d be using one. There’s been too much progress by other manufacturers to things like file linking chord sequences (and graphics files for sheet music) to registrations, multi-part chord sequences, audio clip launching, arpeggiators, samplers etc that the BK9 lacks.

For me, it hit the sweet spot if a great sounding keyboard with good sequencer and audio backing capabilities and an adequate arranger in a VERY lightweight and compact 76 without compromising the action. But I don’t think that, to a PA3X or Tyros hardcore arranger player it posed much of a challenge, and sales during its production run kind of bear it out.

Even to Roland users, it was an odd duck, being more a successor to the E60 than a progression from the G70/E80. Many didn’t want to take what initially felt like a big step backwards, and missed out on something that turned out to be a far more capable keyboard.

Yes, there are definitely all the pieces in place to make some fairly simple tweaks and feature fixes, and it would be a great arranger. But it appears that Roland have decided the market is simply no longer worth the effort. I wonder who’s next? Korg’s rather halfhearted, half-unfinished rollout of the PA5x with no accompanying mid-line models kind of echoes Roland’s bow out…