Italian Engineering!!

All made (not just assembled) in Italy.

There must be a reason(s) for this, right?

I never knew Roland arrangers were made in Italy?

The Fantom G that I previously owned (for 3 weeks) was made in Japan!

All the synths are.

Roland used to make their arrangers in Italy, then tried to offshore the production to China, had problems (no idea what) and the talk was that they were going to go back to Italy, but that must have been what caused the cessation of production. Seems that, in the interim, Roland simply decided to cut their losses (can't be cheap moving an entire production line around) and get out of the whole sector (TOTL and MOTL arrangers) completely.

Looking at Ketron's lunacy (factory or staff seem to be on holiday half the time, and working short hours the rest! ), maybe the thought of going Italian again just pushed Roland to seppuku?

"What do the top of the line Ketron, Roland, Korg and Gem Arranger keyboards SHARE?"

That they all are playing catch up to the great sound of Tyros 4 ?...

If this were a courtroom, that statement would be disallowed as conjecture, hearsay and argumentative.
DonM

then again it could be the truth nothing BUT the TRUTH

1, 2, oh well, you know what comes next...

con·jec·ture–noun
1.
the formation or expression of an opinion or theory without sufficient evidence for proof.
2.
an opinion or theory so formed or expressed; guess; speculation.

I MUCH prefer Roland's lead and drum sounds to those of Yamaha. I obviously prefer the Audya overall to both, along with some, not all, of the lead sounds. Korg is not in the running for my purposes. Those are opinions, but not conjecture because I've owned or personally played all of them. I can't comment on the T4, but what I've heard doesn't sound any different from earlier models. Another thread compared the same song done on Audya and T4 and I think I recall the jury mostly preferred the Audya's rendition. So maybe it's NOT the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Even though we all know you were just making a joke, I don't see a reason to turn an interesting thread into the same old mine is better than yours stuff.
I sincerely hope Yamaha has improved the drums and vocal harmonizer on the T4, but I haven't heard any evidence of that happening.
More to the point of this thread, it would seem the quality of construction hasn't improved and they are likely to continue to have the same problems with such things as sinking buttons, paint wearing off the plastic case and having to replace screens. These have all been recurring problems on various models and I have personally experienced all of them with past Yamaha models. I can put up with the delays from Italy for the sake of owning a unique and high quality instrument.
And that is my sworn statement and I'm sticking to it. The defense rests.

DonM

Having both the Audya 5 and Roland G70, I would say the styles and lead instruments on the Audya are better, but not the build, including the keybed. I know it is a few pounds heavier but, still a classy keyboard with some better functions.