Hi Tony, Yamaha would love to have an arranger keyboard that can demand a secondhand price of over 50% of the original retail price some 11 !!!!! years from original launch here in Europe. They have only had one instrument that has been held in such high regard but it was an iconic synth the DX7.Unfortunately Matsushita in their wisdom decided to kill of the "Technics" brand,even their great mk1200 series DJ turntables! but when you are as large as Matsushita accountants rule the roost.Technics KN7000 was way ahead of it's time,shame we never had the KN8000 (we can only dream).
John

Kit used Hammond T202/H112 plus Leslie speakers,Yamaha HS8+DX7
Technics GN9,Roland E86, Now the Greatest KN7000 Technics!!!

Basically what has happened, we've all moved with the times, rightly so.

30 years ago, I thought I was the "bees knees" with my portable Hammond X5 (with pedals going through a small bass amp) and an Elka rotary speaker with a Roland SH 2000 on top. Just add a drummer, a great sound.
Just imagine turning up with that gear to a gig now, we'd be laughted off the face of the earth.
Like them or not, we will see new arrangers appear for years to come. They can deliver a very slick modern sound.

Frank

Most dont even look at what their kb can do before buying another or upgrade etc.Been guilty of that myself until now with my S-950... .... If anyone missed what they had before it's an easy thing to go ebay etc, and buy it again at a mere cost of what they paid years ago ...... sounds & styles are pretty much peaking in technology today,.....on-board features & user needs are the wave of the future & what you can do with them to make music.

The REAL question is, if there were so such thing as arrangers, how many current SZ OMB's would be able to make a living as a single.

chas

chas ... the REAL question is how many single musician acts are making a living today regardless of the instrument they play ...

Chas, I WAS making a living as an entertainer long before Arranger keyboards became available. I was a good-looking, young kid fresh out of the U.S. Navy, owned a 6-string guitar that I purchased from a pawn shop along with a Fender amp and a Shure mic and stand. I sat on a stool in a honky-tonk bar, played nothing but country and light rock, sang to the ladies and made a whopping $50 for 4 hours work. Back than I thought that was a damned fortune. My day job then only paid $100 a week for 40-plus hours and I was considered among the highly paid workers for Bendix Field Engineering Corporation, traveling around the world setting up satellite tracking stations for Project Mercury. That was more than a half-century ago, though. So, if keyboards no longer existed, I guess I could go back to that, but I damned sure don't want to - I'm having too much fun with the keyboard and singing to the young ladies.

Cheers,

Gary

Tony, as others have pointed out, it wasn't the lack of quality that caused technics to go out of business, but a business decision by Matsushita ... the last technics boards were SO far ahead of the curve and had features even some of the TOTL KBs today do not have ...
they may not have been an Audya, but they were pretty damn good ...

Nice thread.

For me, the need to upgrade is slowly diminishing with each change I've made. It was even a push for me to change from T3 to T4, and now that I have, the T4 has everything I want and beyond, I can't see myself changing my TOTL model in a hurry. It sounds wonderful and I can't fault it, so if there were no more arrangers available it wouldn't really bother me too much for this line.

The S950 however is almost perfect but I just wished it had better choirs and vocals, I am pretty sure the next S model will have these and that would probably be the only upgrade I'd need in that range (unless Yamaha release a choir pack for the S950).

We are lucky to have such fantastic instruments and you can't really go wrong whichever keyboard you buy.

Danny,

I think you are spot on the T4 will take some pull away to change and the better they get the more you are less likely to swap up one.

You do know that your closing quote " We are lucky to have such fantastic instruments and you can't really go wrong whichever keyboard you buy." I can here someone loading up the 50 mm cannon on the Messerschmitt 109 and he will be on your tail any-time now, he just needs to log a flight plan, daga daga daga daga, he'll be all over you like a rash

I'd miss some things, but I could play out the rest of my career as long as I have something to play bass lines with, a drum machine (or drummer), and something to pound out chords on ... preferably an electric piano type sound. To be honest - my Antique Korg i5S that Boo sold me, would do the trick nicely ... IF it had to. My PA900 is filling the bill quite well for the next little while and there is nothing on the horizon that excites me. NOTHING.