Arrangers akin to porn - what an absurd idea - except when I think about how much time I spend with my PSR2000......just her and I.

I agree with Diki here. Of the some what six thousand ARPs in the XS, about half of them are capable of recognizing chord changes. That's half the battle. I have a feeling that we're going to see something very soon which will incorporate both feature sets from Yamaha within the next couple of years.

Ha! I'm not surprised Ketron keep that quiet!

Hey, it's not like I WANT to see the arranger die out!

I just call it the way I see it...

Nobody wanted to see the organ die off, but economics, technology and changing music tastes made it happen. None of those processes have stopped, IMO

How many arranger manufacturers have gone under in the last ten or fifteen years? Not exactly the sign of a healthy market segment. If Technics, Solton, GEM and others can no longer make it, if Wersi and some others are hanging on by their fingernails, surely it's not doom and gloom to see a trend? I'm not talking about next year, maybe not the next ten years (although that's close to the figure I expect), but it is happening. Look at the age average on this forum.

None of us getting any younger!

Overhere in europe Keyboards still sell a lot better then full blown synthesizers..

All of these assumptions are based on the US market. which is a niche market for arrangers and currently of no relevance at all.

This allready starts out with the current salesmen in your local music shop.

No they are not heading for the refuse heap but they are changing into more workstation type products or workstations will take on more and more arranger functions.

My understanding is that Solton is strictly a Brand.. it was never a manufacturer . The name was used to brand Ketron products in the USA & than became the brand name for GEM ..

I'm glad Yamaha is Strong & Striving they must be doing something right

Solton was or is a distributor company. . Ketron used their name since it was already popular in Europe. When Solton put their name on Ketron’s keyboards it always also said by “Ketron Labs”.

As robust (comparatively) as arranger sales are in Europe and elsewhere, it failed to stop these manufacturers from going out of business. I really AM trying to take the big picture into account...

From what I have read, it is beginning to be harder over there to find some of the TOTL arrangers, especially Roland and Ketron (and to a degree, Korg) in regular stores that USED to stock them ten, fifteen years ago. The trend may be slower, but seems to still be happening. Europe is still the heartland of home organ music too, but that hasn't equated to a robust industry, at least by sixties and seventies standards.

Those that chose the home organ route haven't been in sufficient numbers to stop it still being boutique manufacturers at boutique prices. Hopefully, I am dead wrong. But until I see that true arranger/WS hybrid (labeling the case 'WS' doesn't make any of our modern arrangers one in fact ) I still worry...