Scott, you're so right . . . sales drives development. Yamaha isn't interested in supporting their products but only in selling as many as possible. Maybe we're all better off buying a good "used" model. Hey, did you ever get started on that book? Sounded like a great idea to me.

Tom, thanks . . . it's nice to be missed. The Allante had some front end problems and the Cadillac garage wanted $5,000.00 to fix it. Way too much. I took it to a local mechanic I've known for 20 years. He thought it could be fixed for $3,000 to $4,000. Still seemed too much. So, I traded it in on an Eldorado ETC (Black). A real nice ride. Good hearing from you.

Trtjazz, how right you are! Upgrading for a few trivial tech-gadgets is out of the question. Those doing this have either too little brains or too much money. And as far as Yamaha's plugins . . . have you ever priced them? They cost as much as a low-end keyboard, and they're only CARDS . . . AND YAMAHA DOESN'T EVEN TELL YOU HOW TO USE THEM WITH THE 9000 PRO! (Not all of them are compatible as well). Thanks for your input, Trtjazz.

Squeak_D, I think Steve Demming is very aware of what's going on, and so are his bosses over him at Yamaha. You're right about the 9000 Pro costing too much for Yamaha to give buyers this kind of treatment. Maybe Synthzone will act as a catalyst to stop this kind of corporate thinking . . . at least, we can hope.

Bebop, I'm with you 100%. Yamaha will have to make a 180 degree turn in their customer service and support before they'll pry another dime out of me.

ThePro, I don't know if Yamaha was "testing" when it introduced the 9000 Pro. It cost a lot of money to develop and market a high-end keyboard. But you're right about it being an attempt to enter the PRO market. I believe that the reason this keyboard failed was that Yamaha failed to understand the true nature of the "barriers" they had to conquer.

Most pro keyboard players consider an arranger as either a toy or a cheat created for people that can't really play keyboard. Although we know that this is completely false, it's still a prevalent notion. Arranger players get very little respect in the keyboard world. Yamaha's marketing didn't counter this notion effectively or often enough in the "right" places (magazines/websites/big name keyboard players/etc.). Yeah, Yamaha would definitely like to forget about the 9000 series forever.

Rattley, Yamaha's promises are about as good as sucking a monkey.

Brickboo, it's been a long time since I heard from you my friend. I hope all is well at the Brickboo Ranch. I've never been good a lip reading but I do get your drift.

- - - THERE IS A SOLUTION - - -

There is a solution to this, and you all know what it is . . . an open-source operating system or a MS Windows/Linux OS built into the keyboard. Yeah, I've heard about the mediastation but until I can see one, I'm not buying one. However, it is moving keyboarding in the right direction.

What we need isn't a full-fledged keyboard. We only need the arranger section but it must be built on a par with a computer. That is, it needs to have a removeable (therefore upgradable) motherboard, hard drive, scsi port, cdrom, slots for high-end memory, pci slots, USB, etc. We then simply midi it to our favorite keyboard. When better OS from any company arrive, we download and install them. Well, that may not sound very likely but its the direction we must go to avoid being taken hostage by the proprietary hardware and software of the keyboard manufacturers.

What do others think?

Steve




[This message has been edited by Stevizard (edited 03-10-2004).]