Cost of Keyboards

There has been a lot said lately about the price of arranger keyboards. Is it worth upgrading? Is it worth the money?
Let's look at it from another perspective.
Fifteen years ago, just after "graduating" from organs, I had a top-of-the-line Yamaha arranger (PSR6100 maybe?) As I recall it cost around $1500.
In order to use it, I had to midi it to an external drum machine ($500.) I used a DX7 and a piano module for most of the sounds ($2,000 + $400). I used a Yamaha processor (SPX90) and a midi foot controller to assign pitch-shifts to do vocal harmony, before Digitech came out with the Vocalist. You had to assign each midi button to an interval (third, fourth, fifth). This was another $800. I used a compressor/limiter on the vocals ($400.) I used an external graphic equalizer ($300.) Then you had to have external effects. I used two units, one for reverb another for delay. ($$600.) Then you needed all the cables and racks to assemble this. Then you had to transport it. Setup time was an hour, if you were fast. Forget upgrades. You just lived with what you had and bought something new if you wanted to upgrade.
All this added up to close to $7000. Even this was a savings over what you had to have in the B3/Rhodes days.
Now, the lowly PSR2000 has ALL of these features, plus many more (including sequencer) for a measly $1100. or so.
You can buy top of the line arrangers for a third of what I paid for all this gear, and they include sequencers and samplers and much more.
Arranger keyboards are the biggest bargain in the music industry, in my opinion.
Sure I wish they were less, but I think they are a wonderful value.
DonM

Don,
Good points all.
jam on,
Terry

HI Don,
The other side of that coin. I sit here in my home project recording studio looking at most of the gear you mentioned plus a lot more plus 10 keyboards at a total cost of over 100,000. Todays value (ACV), is probably between 5 and 10,000 on a good day with a lot of drunks at an auction.
To add to this sad state of affairs: I am now using only 3 or 4 pieces of equipment for the last year. The rest just sits and (yup you guessed it), depreciates.
One keyboard a year at 3 or 4 thousand is really a great bargain now days.
I just bought the psr9000 new at 1995.00, added a hard drive for 180.00 and a cdrw that I had and it does it all. The rest is sitting. Any offers???
Bebop

I agree with you, Don. Twenty some years ago, not long after I arrived in Washington, we bought a Lowrey Holiday electronic organ. It "listed" for $8,000, but we got it for a bargain price of $4,000. I felt a bit guilty spending so much money on an instrument that I felt I'd better practice a lot to make sure I got my money's worth! Two year's ago, when I discovered arranger keyboards and purchased my first, the PSR-540 for $500, I gave away the Lowrey, which still was a beatufiul piece of furniture, but the sound couldn't compare to the 540. And now I've got the 2000 and it was only a bit over $1,000. Even the top of the line models would cost less than that organ did -- and that price comparison doesn't even take inflation into account. The arranger keyboards today are great bargains and they just get better year after year.

[This message has been edited by Joe Waters (edited 10-13-2002).]