Good advice Diki, I too can see the writing on the wall. I am sure you are correct in saying, in essence, that our arrangers are as good as it is going to get, owing to the fact that the future customers will not be looking to buy what we considered improvements. There will be incremental goodies thrown in, but I don't think enough to tempt me.

And me Chas, if I live that long. Haha

Thanks Leon, might do that. Now all I have to do is find that font that makes the notation work correctly again. I ran it for years with weird notation till I came across a post on the psr tutorial site. It was so great to have it working correctly again.

Hi Diki, who could possibly predict what is going to go up in value and what isn’t. Doubt arrangers would would be one of them. Haha.

Suppose the companies are in between a rock and a hard place, the fossils don’t want the modern type styles and the younger generation don’t want the oldies type styles.

Shame what’s happening with the PA5x, doesn’t sound like they’re going to have a fix till round Xmas. Even then , not sure if it’s going to have all the same functions the Pa4x had. I was going to buy one sight unseen,as I had with all my previous Korg arrangers, and they never disappointed. Just assumed it was going to be an upgraded version of a Pa4x, but maybe not the case.. Was about to order one when I discovered I had a health problem, so decided to wait till that gets sorted . And wow, have they ever jumped up in price. Debating now whether it’s worth it.

Hi Leon,
are you Casper TutorSynth?

Yes, I'm Casper. The nicknames are different because I signed up for this forum way back in 2003 when YouTube didn't even exist.
Leon is my real name.

I agree that it’s probably unlikely that any arranger is going to become a valued classic 30 years from now. But then again, I didn’t think that an 808 was going to be worth thousands when everybody got rid of theirs to get LinnDrums or DMX’s or Drumulators!

I didn’t think 2600’s or Minimoog’s would be worth a fortune when we got our OBXa’s and Prophet’s which could play chords!

But young players found new styles of music using those old fossils that were going for next to nothing, turned them back into highly prized gear when the new styles became global hits.

Who knows what a talented kid might be able to squeeze out of an abandoned PA4X years from now? I know few of us squeeze much out of it other than what’s on the surface… We tend to want our innovation to come from the next model, and the next, and the next. But talented broke kids make their innovation themselves with the cheap used gear we discard in our race to move on to the latest thing.

I look forward to hearing what some kid out of Delhi or Riyadh will do with an abandoned old arranger. It might be amazing! 🎹😎

And I have said for decades that the arranger has no future until there is no such thing as ROM styles. No fossil like us is going to buy a keyboard packed with triphop and deep house styles, and no kid is going to buy a keyboard with cha-cha’s and waltzes.

The front panel should be unlabeled, and curated ‘collections’ of styles loaded in by the salesman appropriate to the age of the customer. Remember the Rapman? A simple arranger, but only containing rap and hiphop styles. Sold like hotcakes. Arranger industry didn’t learn a damn thing…

Hi Diki, couldn’t agree more. How great it would be if you could pick the genre of the styles you want and be loaded in as collections. Don’t know why they have this one size fits all attitude.
Don’t know the Rapman, sounds like someone had a good idea.

Hi Leon , found your channel a little while back, hope to explore further when I’m feeling a bit better. I’ve always been a Korg arranger fan, loved the style editing/creation tools on the korgs, just needed my Korg and xgworks, but starting to realise how much editing is possible on Yamaha’s too, just requires extra software.
Your video clips will help a lot.