LOL... which makes it a self-perpetuating system, as, to get surveyed, you MUST buy a Yamaha 61. If your preference is for a larger keyboard, you are NEVER going to get surveyed, because you CAN'T buy a decent Yamaha 76...

And round and round it goes...

This couple of paragraphs by spalding I believe hits the nail on the head...

Heres the thing and i have mentioned this a number of times before. Yamaha is wary of cannabalising sales from their product range and so are very carelful about what features they offer in the numerous segments or niches of the market. Adding 76 keys to their top of the line arranger may gain more cutomers (or not) but it may also lose sales from their other 76 key instrumnets and worse, may alienate their already well developed well segmented sales from their existing customers who are size and weight sensitive.

Other manufacturers may wish to try and compete by offering 76 key arrangers and if yamaha saw a way to do that and could make the most profit from it (without cannabilising existing sales elsewhere) they ould do it. Its not an emotional issue for yamaha as it is for some of us. If it made good business sense , it would be done.

Yamaha's decision to not make a TOTL 76 has NOTHING to do with what customers actually WANT... It is about protecting their internal divisions and not cannibalizing sales in one sector by a better, competing product in another. This is the ONLY explanation I have ever heard that makes any sense... every other one is easily disproved, simply by showing other manufacturers being able to do it. Or Yamaha doing it themselves, albeit badly.

Maybe I'm an odd duck, but I completely fail to see how what size keyboard you prefer to play on has ANYTHING to do with the capabilities you need on that keyboard. There are 61 note players who need next to nothing. There are 76 and 88 note players who want everything that is available. The two things are completely unrelated. In the WS world, it is acknowledged as a fact of life that ANY keyboard needs to be available in all possible configurations. Yamaha don't say that 76 and 88 MotifXF players don't need anywhere NEAR the capability that 61 MoXF players do... they realize, only too well, that keybed choice has NOTHING to do with what a player needs out of their WS.

Main difference is, Yamaha have no other divisions with really similar products to the Motif. So the market hasn't been balkanized, and divided up so that intra division rivalry prevents them from making a product that there IS a demand for (or NOBODY would buy PA2Xpro's, Audya's, G70's, Mediastations, etc. ).

But, as Yamaha see no need to differentiate their WS line on size differences, it is hard to accept that, mysteriously, the arranger market is any different, and Yamaha's actions are based on pure market research. Bottom line is, even if the market research DID show a need, Yamaha would not make it, because it would clash with their current product divisions. And we would NEVER hear from them that they had seen the market, but chose to ignore it. We only have the evidence of our eyes to prove that...