"Planned obsolescence" is fightin' words to engineers!  Joe
Tushinsky would be angered to hear that said about his pet project,
the Marantz Pianocorder, and you shouldn't say that in the company of
Yamaha folks, either.  The Pianocorder is not obsolete, but it suffers
from lack of product support and new songs.  A Pianocorder in 1978 for
$5800 must have included the piano too.  The dealer price for the kit
was much less than $2000, as I recall.

The supply of new contemporary pop songs for the Pianocorder (and
all other player pianos) depends upon the size of the market.  Pop
songs for non-expression pianolas are offered by QRS.  No one makes
rolls of new pop tunes for pneumatic _reproducing pianos_ because the
market won't pay the costs.  Same for Pianocorder.  But I've heard that
more than 25,000 Pianocorders were sold, so surely the market exists
for a little box which will play MIDI files of contemporary music and
output a signal to the Pianocorder.  Does this box exist?  Is it in
production?

If replacement electronic components could be fabricated in a simple
workshop with the same ease that parts are made for a player piano,
today's electronically-controlled musical instruments would be in use
for as many years as the pneumatic player pianos !

Robbie Rhodes