Nigel, believe me, I hope Roland succeed with their new module...personally, I think it comes up short, as I have worked as a clinician for Roland in the past, and have used their earlier modules, the RA-series, which were awesome.

Yamaha has dabbled in the module area not that long ago with their QY-series of sequencer/arranger modules.

http://usa.yamaha.com/products/music-production/sequencers/qy300/?mode=model

Not big sellers, but they did okay...the smaller ones, like the QY-10/20 sold very well indeed, but it is a kind of niche market, and so they got out of it for now, at least.

I'm not expecting Yamaha to make a module, nor do I think Korg will make one either, as, for one thing, they don't make accordions like Roland, who is definitely aiming the BK-7m at that segment...that's where/why the old Roland RA-series was started...hence the hiring back then of Luigi Bruti (master accordionist) when they were introduced.

As I said at the beginning of this post, I really hope they succeed with the module, but, I also hope they will be open-minded enough to listen to suggestions and tips from other people in the arranger business so that the module will mature into something even better...that can't hurt, can it?

Ian