I think the main problem is the mad rush to monetize YouTube content. Early bird gets the worm, and all that..!

So you get gushing reviews designed to attract and excite, at least long enough for the YouTube algorithms to count as a full watch. But eventually the reviewer has the product long enough for the niggles to sort themselves out into those you can live with, and those that you can’t.

And then you get ANOTHER review based on practicality. Often diametrically opposed to the first. A win/win for the content creator, a lose/lose for the watcher unless you control your enthusiasm until the second review gets uploaded..!

Thing is, most of us already have one (or more!) arrangers that do a great job. If you’re a pro, you’re set. If you’re a home player, your current arranger sounds as good as the day you got it… maybe even better if updated or edited well. You aren’t going to get anyone in your audience going ‘You should have the new, just released latest model, we’re going to go find someone who has one until you do!’

You CAN afford to wait until the dust settles, until the drawbacks are all found, until the drawbacks are FIXED, even… especially when trading in the previous model for the new. There’s no guarantee the dealer will still have your old model once you realize you might have migrated too early and want to swap back.

Let the YouTubers gush then rebound, then take a look at the product after the first update, and see if it addresses the more important issues you might have. You definitely want to place importing and easily using all your careful work from the previous model you just traded away high on that list. Unless you want to replicate the last three or four YEARS of your work!

I personally can’t think of many YouTube reviewers that I honestly think make their main living actually PLAYING arrangers exclusively. Hence the delay between the first gushing review and the more realistic follow-up review (you can always tell the non-arranger players by the fact they rarely do a follow-up!).

Also, gushing initial reviews tend to help these guys get a crack at the NEXT new model to continue the cycle of monetizing content. And on and on, rinse and repeat. Most of us regulars have been through this process ad nauseam, sooner or later the shoe drops.

Me, I don’t believe anything until I’ve had the arranger for about a month, and that’s often six months or more after its release! Running through all the things you NEED it to do, finding out if they still work, finding out if there’s a different way the new arranger does things, finding out if it’s better or not, finding out if there’s a workaround that might be acceptable (or even better than the old way!), all that takes time…

In the meantime, keep your old arranger! Trade-ins are handy at keeping the cost low, but you run the danger of finding something you can’t work with until you can’t swap back. I don’t think I’ve traded in an arranger since I went from the G800 to the G1000 (which had very little difference other than the ZIP drive instead of the floppy disk), and that’s a LONG time ago..!