Quote: Everybody "wants" but, nobody wants to pay.....

I'm willing to pay but there is a limit. First of all high-end keyboards are a lot like fine furniture. There is a huge 'mark-up' on both products. A nice piece of fine furniture can sell for a lot of money but the profit margin is huge. A piece costing $5,000 can turn a $3,000-$4,000 "profit" and the manufacturer laughs all the way to the bank.

High-end keyboards are a similar "pot-of-gold" for keyboard manufacturers. For example a Tyros4 costs around $5,200 and I'm estimating Yammie probably makes $2,500-$3,000 in pure "profit" on each Tyros4 they sell. It's a brilliant marketing scheme that Yammie and others have seized upon after realizing that many people are more than willing to fork over big bucks on so-called high-end keyboards. Most consumers who buy high-end arranger keyboards are senior citizens... many with large bank accounts with money to burn... and they seem to have a tendency to acquire the "latest greatest" gadget(s) i.e. the Tyros1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9 and so forth. Yammie adds just enough additional "improvements" in order to keep the ball rolling i.e the scheme perpetuating itself, and the result is a huge profit margin going directly into Yammie's overstuffed pockets as they laugh all the way to the bank that their brilliant marketing scheme remains intact for the next generation of keyboards that rolls off their assembly lines.

Was it P.T. Barnum that said "a sucker is born every minute"?

I'm not suggesting people who buy each new generation of any given product is a sucker. Rich people with money to burn don't really miss the money and if it makes them happy then more power to them. Apple products are a similar case study. The iPhone, iPod and i-Pad are also highly popular and usually much more expensive than the competition. Yet consumers devoted to Apple products keep forking over big bucks on each new model in many cases.

What I think needs to happen is for consumers to "step back" and realize what they're doing and once they become more "discriminating" in what they purchase (that is to say in what each new model has to offer in terms of significant improvements vs. 'incremental' cosmetics) and then hold off buying those products with incremental improvements. It would go a long way in holding manufacturer's 'feet to the fire' and force them to produce keyboards worthy enough to write home about without breaking the bank. In other words, those excellent sounding Drum Kits everybody wishes were on the Tyros4? If Yammie realized consumers were starting to "buck the trend" and wouldn't settle for "incremental", Yammie would then be obligated to provide consumers with what they wanted and those excellent sounding Drum Kits - from the Motif series, etc. - would finally arrive on Yammie's high-end arranger product(s) no doubt. Or else Yammie's Music Division could suffer severe repercussions and their "stream of money" could dry up and they could eventually go out of business. The same thing applies to Korg, Roland, Casio and Ketron.

Consumers need to take the bull by the horns and demand excellence in the products they buy, at a fair price. But if enough people keep purchasing those incrementally induced products, then Yammie and the rest of them will likely keep dishing them out to consumers in a "business as usual" manner. Thus perpetuating the marketing scheme that keeps Yammie and the rest of them laughing all the way to the bank and consumers scratching their heads that the Drum Kits still aren't up to snuff and/or the keybed still feels cheesy, etc., etc., etc.

I owned the original Tyros. It was a great keyboard (at the time) at a fair price and the Drum Kit(s) were a nice step up from my PSR-2000. The Tyros4, on the other hand, is a nice keyboard with many excellent sounds but you pay through the nose and the Drum Kits just don't cut it for the price you have to pay. The Korg PA3X is a nice keyboard as well. But it too is way overpriced in my humble opinion. Although the Drum Kits are much better than those on the Tyros4.

I'm a consumer advocate if you haven't noticed. I don't fault Yamaha for trying to make a profit and I don't really fault senior citizens for forking over big bucks on the latest/greatest product(s) which seems to bring them joy and happiness and a chance to brag that their toy sounds better than the other guys toy. No pun intended.

What I take issue with is incrementally improved products that cost and arm and a leg and yet still "lack" features and functions considered professional in nature. Making them cost prohibitive to me at least. If, on the other hand, Yammie released a Tyros5 (or whatever they call it) and it was reasonably priced and fully featured and had great sounding Drum Kits, I would seriously consider buying one. But why would Yammie produce such a beast when there are so many eager beavers out there willing to fork over big bucks on over-priced, incrementally improved products? Therefore in all likelihood Yammie's successor to the Tyros4 will once again be astronomically priced and the Drum Kits will probably still sound amateurish. I would like to be proven wrong on both accounts. But I won't hold my breath needless to say.

All the best, Mike

Yep... T4 $5k+, PA3x $3.5k+

What does that extra $1500 buy you? A used car to carry it in? LOL

Its easy to forget the hidden costs and be distracted by the plastic case and circuit boards alone. But so much more is involved then a parts list:

Design, R&D costs..including prototyping, software developers and programmers, style writers, plus all the other staff involved in production, manufacturing, packaging, logisitcs, marketing accountancy etc...how many people do you think are involved in total in Tyros Project from beginning to end?), , plant and machinery (including maintenance and sevrice), building overheads, taxes, licenses, government standards complience (emmisions, safety, ROHS, WEEE etc), legal fees, taxes, logistics, taxes after sales service, support, warranty costs, parts, taxes...and the list goes on.

Yamaha seems to have the biggest price difference between currently available models. A psr 650 at $800, psr 750 at $1,200, a 950 @ $1,900, then a T4 at $5,200!

Ketron went from a $2,000 sd5 to a $3,900 Audya.

Korg from a $1,200 pa600 to a &2,900 pa800(900??), then to a $3,700
pa3x.

Roland a bk-3 at $650, bk-5 at $1,000, to ???

All of the associated costs mentioned are involved in every model at some point after conception.
I know we're talking lower MOTL and MOTL vs TOTL, but $1,700-$1,900 difference from two manufacturers, and a $3,300 from Yamaha, who are reasonable between their MOTL arrangers, then dispose of that logic when offering the big boy. Roland is reasonable (between their two BK models)until we see if they do a TOTL model- not likely from the chatter I read..

But as stated, it is what the market will bear when you look at TOTL. Not so much supply, but demand. Prices won't change if the demand doesn't fall and enough people are willing to pay.

The ideal situation is to sell more. If that were the case, then the hidden costs can be divided up between more units. Unfortunatly the manufacturers are floundering when it comes to finding new customers and so prices remain high.

This is not helped by online sellers who are happy to operate at under 5%. On the surface it appears good for the consumer but the reality is very different.

Retail showrooms are neaded for new customers to see and hear an instrument of high value. No one is going to shell out a few $1000 for something they have not seen or heard. However retailers have realised they cannot compete with online sellers and so there is no incentive to stock those product lines.

This means there will be no new customers..only returning ones who are quite frankly..moving to a better place!

Less sales mean higher prices and possibility of ceasing production altogether.

What can we do to help? Avoid on line discount merchants and support your local retailers. If Yamaha were to stop TOTL arrangers it would be a MAJOR disaster for the whole industry. There are only three main players now and I am very certain the industry cannot support another manufacturer dropping out of the game..and arrangers would go the way of Electronic Organs.

IMO as computer technology advances as it has been year after year current technology which is still in its infancy will continue to escalate to better things leaving what is now behind including arranger Kb's, electronic musical instruments, etc,etc, and all things TECH in our lives as it stands now....don't be naive to think these small increments of so called advancements will even be around 10/20 years from now as we know it.
Enjoy whats here now .....stock pile it if that's what you need to be happy because it will quickly disappear for sure in the near future.The fun hasn't even begun yet ...the sad part most of us wont be here to see it or enjoy it.

TWD ... this is true - to a point - ... but how often does a board come out that is TOTALLY NEW in design, concept, OS, styles, sounds, etc. ... I agree the 'cover' may look different, but today's KBs are still products of R&D, programming, etc. that has been evolving through the years, not being completely re-invented ...
And is the high price because there is such a small market, or is there a small market because the price is high ... It seems to me the manufacturer sets the price before the product even hits the streets ... and THAT's when we see what kind of market there is for it ...

The manufacturers are floundering when it comes to finding new customers because they are basically ignoring the needs of younger players. You can only look forward to diminishing returns when you pin your future to an elderly and aging demographic. If you can't sell arrangers to kids, it's game over. Look at the 'home organ'...

Unless the big 3 make a concerted effort to make something like the old Yamaha DJX, but updated and improved to contemporary arranger abilities, the 'arranger' will turn into a rare, expensive niche keyboard, or a cheap nasty toy, or both!

Young players want something that can make THEIR music... and the arranger ain't it! Where are the arpeggiators? Where are the loopers? Where is the easy import of audio loops? Where are all the knobs for the synth sounds? You can't find them on modern (hah!) arrangers!

OTOH, the WS is gradually adding arranger like functions... chord following, buttons to change to different sections of a song, styles (of a sort), things like that. But it seems like they are doing it in a vacuum, that each new 'arranger-like' feature was invented from scratch, and nobody in the WS division is looking at a TOTL arranger and going 'that's a handy thing to do'. So they don't QUITE work right...

It's time for one of the big 3 to step up and go 'what's the easiest way to make modern music?'. The answer is a hybrid of arranger and WS. But each manufacturer out there seems utterly bent on balkanizing both these keyboards. Shared functionality is almost non-existent. But the bottom line is, if you want to sell a LOT of keyboards, you have to make modern music-making easy... the arranger is 'easy', the WS is 'modern'.

Somebody needs to combine the two.

All the kids need is FL Studio and few plugins to do everything they listen to.

Can't take that out to a gig or over to their friends... and they can't PLAY it!