Unfortunately, it looks very much like the decline of the home organ (I would argue that it didn’t really even survive into the 80’s, except as a dwindling niche like ours) is being repeated. And unfortunately the decline of the home organ only left the most expensive models as survivors. Few now can even afford the ‘survivors’, the affordable home organ market is nonexistent.

I think I see this trend starting in arrangers. Korg hasn’t updated their PA1000 in 7 years. Ketron never really have made a midline model, only Yamaha seem to take the midline seriously, but most of their focus seems to be on the Genos.

As our market shrinks, to remain viable arrangers MUST get more expensive. Sales may drop but R&D remains the same. We’ve had 10 years of avoiding the crunch as almost everyone offshored manufacturing to China, but things can’t really get any cheaper than that, and the inevitable climb I think is starting.

Both Korg and Yamaha have very robust synth and workstation divisions, I can only imagine their boards are looking at dwindling arranger sales and asking themselves’Why bother?’. You either sell a LOT of cheaper arrangers, or you sell a few very expensive ones.

Right now, I think we need to treat our current arrangers VERY carefully, maybe even order a few spare parts that get a lot of wear and have a high risk of failure, maybe even buy a used one of the same model as a spare (I’ve got 2 BK9’s!). If there is a new model, it may not be for a while, and it may be quite a lot more expensive…