New arranger maybe on the way

[jeffkorg]

All of the online stores like Sweetwater and Guitar Center and others are no longer selling Pa4x so it looks like a new arranger is on the way.

[Korghelper]

Or they ran out of stock and can’t get delivery dates on the current model..!

Mind you, if it IS close to impossible to buy a current model and a new model is close to launch (like within 3 months or so), Korg might be best served by coming out with an announcement pronto. Like NOW, This might at least get someone who REALLY wants a new arranger right now to hold off on a Yamaha or Ketron purchase and wait for the new Korg.

Normally yes, it isn’t great for existing stock to announce a new arranger a long time in advance. But if there is no existing stock, I don’t see a downside. Build the buzz, build the anticipation, and still lose no existing sales or anger your distributors by forcing them to sell existing stock at a much lower price.

So, come on Korg…. Spill the beans. This isn’t the normal state of things, why stick to the normal order of events with new product announcement?

[karmathanever]

It's possible that COVID could be affecting this.
PA4X is not officially discontinued and here, it is in stock, available and back-order supported - distributor has no knowledge of any replacement. It is also still fetching a big price.

However, I know no more than anyone else at this stage....
If there is a new arranger in the background, I would guess Korg do not want to wreck potential PA4X sales before absolutely necessary.
An announcement too early will flood the second-hand market and hence destroy the "new" market.

Again, I reckon Korg will announce product news first as they have always done.

Pete

[Biggles]

Here in the UK the 4X is in short supply.

Some stores have it listed as available March.

Don’t hold your breath for availability should Korg release a new model, the PA1000 was not readily available for six months and even then the price will be over inflated for the first yesr.

Natilus 61 started at £2000 it is now retailing at a far more realistic £1575

[Rob Sherratt]

My new Pa4x 76 Oriental was delivered last week. Supplied by Thomann. I am in tune again

[taichi]

Hi Biggles,

Korg have to be very careful here in the UK regarding reasons for “availability”. Some people have short memories but in 2015/2018 Korg along with others, were fined a total of millions for price fixing in the UK. Forcing retailers to keep their prices high. It was reported in all of the national newspapers and musical magazines. To save me time here please Google it and read the full story.

However there is another issue for Pa4x owners and anyone thinking of purchasing one. What about SPARE PARTS, THE COST OF SPARE PARTS AND THE COST OF FITTING THEM. Can we purchase a possible "obsolete" Pa4x without a guarantee of the SPARE PARTS situation. Would you buy an obsolete anything without a guarantee of spare parts ??. I think not.

[Korghelper]

There is definitely a good case for Korg to organize a global spare parts exchange and market. They aren’t making these things in the numbers they were a couple of decades ago, it is too much to expect every separate corporate region hold enough stock to keep legacy (and soon to become legacy!) models working no matter what goes wrong.

Globalism has made shipping small keyboard parts (mobos, displays, sliders knobs etc) around the world so easy, the local distributor need not be stuck with repair stock it may have trouble recouping if the model proves (hopefully) reliable. This is something that needs to be moved to the corporate headquarters. Times are tough enough for the distributors already…

[Bachus]

Hi Biggles,

Korg have to be very careful here in the UK regarding reasons for “availability”. Some people have short memories but in 2015/2018 Korg along with others, were fined a total of millions for price fixing in the UK. Forcing retailers to keep their prices high. It was reported in all of the national newspapers and musical magazines. To save me time here please Google it and read the full story.

However there is another issue for Pa4x owners and anyone thinking of purchasing one. What about SPARE PARTS, THE COST OF SPARE PARTS AND THE COST OF FITTING THEM. Can we purchase a possible "obsolete" Pa4x without a guarantee of the SPARE PARTS situation. Would you buy an obsolete anything without a guarantee of spare parts ??. I think not.

Yeah, they got fined, but it was a sad story

The one most known for pricefixing(yamaha) got a free out of jail ticket, because after they got caught redhanded they helped te investegators catching all the other brands.

Here is Holland Yamaha still fixes prices even tough its illegal.. if you sell Yamaha instruments to cheap, you loose your dealership.

[Biggles]

Hi Biggles,

Korg have to be very careful here in the UK regarding reasons for “availability”. Some people have short memories but in 2015/2018 Korg along with others, were fined a total of millions for price fixing in the UK. Forcing retailers to keep their prices high. It was reported in all of the national newspapers and musical magazines. To save me time here please Google it and read the full story.

However there is another issue for Pa4x owners and anyone thinking of purchasing one. What about SPARE PARTS, THE COST OF SPARE PARTS AND THE COST OF FITTING THEM. Can we purchase a possible "obsolete" Pa4x without a guarantee of the SPARE PARTS situation. Would you buy an obsolete anything without a guarantee of spare parts ??. I think not.

Yeah, they got fined, but it was a sad story

The one most known for pricefixing(yamaha) got a free out of jail ticket, because after they got caught redhanded they helped te investegators catching all the other brands.

Here is Holland Yamaha still fixes prices even tough its illegal.. if you sell Yamaha instruments to cheap, you loose your dealership.

Yamaha in the UK are overpriced, £3900 for a Genos is plain stupid.

Yamaha SX900 is £1850 whilst a Korg Pa 1000 is £1500

At the newbie and cheap end they flood the market so buyers get sucked into the brand and they stay there as they move up to the overpriced SX models before going onto a Genos.

[taichi]

Yes Bachus, everyone seems to be involved in price fixing of our keyboards. Not just Korg. Shame on them all. Here is the opening of the official report from CMA. The full report is available online. In detail.

The consequences of restricting resale prices:

an open letter to suppliers and retailers in the musical instruments sector The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has recently imposed fines totalling more than £13.7 million on musical instruments suppliers for breaking competition law by restricting online discounting. Separately, a musical instruments retailer has also admitted to engaging in RPM with a leading supplier and agreed to pay a maximum fine of more than £250k to settle the case

. What you need to know:

• It is illegal for a supplier to prevent a retailer from discounting prices
. • Both the supplier and the retailer are potentially breaking the law if they agree that the retailer will not price below a minimum level.
• An agreement does not have to be explicit – it can be achieved by threats or financial incentives not to sell below a particular price
. • Cheating on an agreement – by a retailer sometimes reducing prices – does not prevent such arrangements being illegal.
• Fines can be increased if the CMA finds that the law has been broken intentionally because businesses are aware that their behaviour restricts competition.
• The CMA can impose fines of up to 10% of worldwide turnover on businesses that break competition law.
• It is important to ensure that everyone in your organisation understands what they need to do to stay on the right side of the law

. Resale price maintenance in musical instruments

An agreement between a supplier and a retailer restricting the retailer’s ability to reduce prices is known as resale price maintenance (RPM). RPM is illegal because it prevents 2 retailers from offering lower prices and setting their prices independently to attract more customers.1 The CMA has evidence suggesting that RPM has been widespread in the musical instruments sector and has taken enforcement action in five separate cases. We have now imposed substantial fines on suppliers of digital piano and keyboards (£3.7 million), guitars (£4.5 million), electronic drum kits (£4 million) and high-tech musical equipment and synthesizers (over £1.5 million) for RPM. One digital piano and keyboard and guitar supplier was given full immunity from fines under the CMA’s leniency programme. The retailer in that case has also agreed to pay a fine of more than £250k to settle allegations that it engaged in RPM.

[Korghelper]

I would counter-argue that today’s high end arrangers are still exceptional value. It’s easy to look at retail price alone (never mind that dealer private price may be significantly lower) but let’s not forget that the latest generation of Yamaha arrangers are a quantum leap forward in some considerably important areas.

Genos has double the polyphony (with certain restrictions) over the last Tyros. Did they double the price? It has 28 freely assignable insert effects compared to the T5’s 10. Did they triple the price? Similar improvements in sample RAM, etc.. A high-res touch screen for the first time, a chord sequencer considerably more advanced than the Korg/Roland system, nice 76 keybed (as base level, not an upgrade), yada yada yada.

I would argue that the leap from the T5 to Genos (and arguably even more so the jump from the S950 to the SX900!) is much greater than the leap from the PA3X to PA4X, or the PA 800 to PA1000. At least as far as raw hardware power is concerned. Let’s take personal preference out of the equation, specs don’t lie.

That this, in the age of global inflation combined with a dwindling market, comes at the price of a small increase in price doesn’t surprise anyone who isn’t living in a dreamworld where things with much greater raw power cost the same as things with less.

For any computer based product to justify huge increases in power without a corresponding increase in price, the volume of sales must at the very least remain constant, and preferentially go up significantly. This, sadly, is not the case with the dwindling high end arranger market. Sure, we want ever increasing power, but we are no longer buying them in the numbers we once were. Manufacturers can respond to this in one of two ways… make them a bit more expensive to cover the loss of market while increasing the power, or take what I would argue has been Korg’s approach lately, keep the price about level, but make any improvements minor at best.

So, specifically in terms of raw power improvements, and improvements to hardware and software (polyphony, effects, keybed size, touch screen OS and advanced Loop sequencer), I would argue that Yamaha’s products sit quite accurately priced compared to Korg’s. Let’s be honest, would you expect a similar radical increase in raw power from Korg arrangers to come without a corresponding increase in base price?

Dream on!

[Biggles]

Yes Bachus, everyone seems to be involved in price fixing of our keyboards. Not just Korg. Shame on them all. Here is the opening of the official report from CMA. The full report is available online. In detail.

The consequences of restricting resale prices:

an open letter to suppliers and retailers in the musical instruments sector The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has recently imposed fines totalling more than £13.7 million on musical instruments suppliers for breaking competition law by restricting online discounting. Separately, a musical instruments retailer has also admitted to engaging in RPM with a leading supplier and agreed to pay a maximum fine of more than £250k to settle the case

. What you need to know:

• It is illegal for a supplier to prevent a retailer from discounting prices
. • Both the supplier and the retailer are potentially breaking the law if they agree that the retailer will not price below a minimum level.
• An agreement does not have to be explicit – it can be achieved by threats or financial incentives not to sell below a particular price
. • Cheating on an agreement – by a retailer sometimes reducing prices – does not prevent such arrangements being illegal.
• Fines can be increased if the CMA finds that the law has been broken intentionally because businesses are aware that their behaviour restricts competition.
• The CMA can impose fines of up to 10% of worldwide turnover on businesses that break competition law.
• It is important to ensure that everyone in your organisation understands what they need to do to stay on the right side of the law

. Resale price maintenance in musical instruments

An agreement between a supplier and a retailer restricting the retailer’s ability to reduce prices is known as resale price maintenance (RPM). RPM is illegal because it prevents 2 retailers from offering lower prices and setting their prices independently to attract more customers.1 The CMA has evidence suggesting that RPM has been widespread in the musical instruments sector and has taken enforcement action in five separate cases. We have now imposed substantial fines on suppliers of digital piano and keyboards (£3.7 million), guitars (£4.5 million), electronic drum kits (£4 million) and high-tech musical equipment and synthesizers (over £1.5 million) for RPM. One digital piano and keyboard and guitar supplier was given full immunity from fines under the CMA’s leniency programme. The retailer in that case has also agreed to pay a fine of more than £250k to settle allegations that it engaged in RPM.

Yamaha Genos is £3900

Korg Pa4X 76 is £2600

I do not think Yamaha or Retailers are listening about price fixing.

[Bachus]

Yes Bachus, everyone seems to be involved in price fixing of our keyboards. Not just Korg. Shame on them all. Here is the opening of the official report from CMA. The full report is available online. In detail.

The consequences of restricting resale prices:

an open letter to suppliers and retailers in the musical instruments sector The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has recently imposed fines totalling more than £13.7 million on musical instruments suppliers for breaking competition law by restricting online discounting. Separately, a musical instruments retailer has also admitted to engaging in RPM with a leading supplier and agreed to pay a maximum fine of more than £250k to settle the case

. What you need to know:

• It is illegal for a supplier to prevent a retailer from discounting prices
. • Both the supplier and the retailer are potentially breaking the law if they agree that the retailer will not price below a minimum level.
• An agreement does not have to be explicit – it can be achieved by threats or financial incentives not to sell below a particular price
. • Cheating on an agreement – by a retailer sometimes reducing prices – does not prevent such arrangements being illegal.
• Fines can be increased if the CMA finds that the law has been broken intentionally because businesses are aware that their behaviour restricts competition.
• The CMA can impose fines of up to 10% of worldwide turnover on businesses that break competition law.
• It is important to ensure that everyone in your organisation understands what they need to do to stay on the right side of the law

. Resale price maintenance in musical instruments

An agreement between a supplier and a retailer restricting the retailer’s ability to reduce prices is known as resale price maintenance (RPM). RPM is illegal because it prevents 2 retailers from offering lower prices and setting their prices independently to attract more customers.1 The CMA has evidence suggesting that RPM has been widespread in the musical instruments sector and has taken enforcement action in five separate cases. We have now imposed substantial fines on suppliers of digital piano and keyboards (£3.7 million), guitars (£4.5 million), electronic drum kits (£4 million) and high-tech musical equipment and synthesizers (over £1.5 million) for RPM. One digital piano and keyboard and guitar supplier was given full immunity from fines under the CMA’s leniency programme. The retailer in that case has also agreed to pay a fine of more than £250k to settle allegations that it engaged in RPM.

Yamaha Genos is £3900

Korg Pa4X 76 is £2600

I do not think Yamaha or Retailers are listening about price fixing.

Its obvious who has been given full imunity..