SP-FORUMS

I thought i remembered reading it was like $500 when it first came out. i checked guitarcenter.com cuz i might get one in place of my 404, but they say its $695!! That's just a rip-off!

It seems to be true:
http://www.zzounds.com/item--ROLSP555

yep. Raised it by $100. It was $595 when I got mine. You can get em cheaper on ebay tho.. NIB

Wow, that's lame. Usually a company lowers the price with time.

Well,I guess that the 555 is mad popular then!!

Making it more expensive will make it less popular. Economics 101.

Pretty crazy that a sampler can appreciate $100 over the course of a couple months... that's pretty much unheard of!

means that someone at Roland prolly got fired for messing up the introductory price point. I don't see how they could be losing money, selling them at $600... but maybe the 555 is doing so well they are trying to recoup for something else that is bombing. Then again, maybe the demand is just through the roof!

Definitely some weird stuff tho... especially with the current US economy. I wonder what percentage of their sales are outside the US.

And is the 404 still $400??? I bet those sales go waaaay up now... which might mean they are going to introduce another model that will be a bigger reach from the 404, so they can try to double sell people instead of having them get the 555 which would be more in the middle.

I ordered mine yesterday. In Germany the price is the same as a couple of months ago, which is 489 Euros. I expect them to decrease it a bit towards the end of the year though. At the moment I think the relation Dollar/Yen is the first reason for rising the price in US.

Anyway, I'm glad I ordered it now after weeks of brooding. I'm planning to get the Kaossilator too, but for the moment I'm going to get some major fun with the SP-555...

it's the same price as always here in japan (60,000 yen). maybe ardnt is on to something with yen/dollar thing.

What I'm saying is, that the US Dollar weakens in relation to Yen, so the exchange rate decreases in relation to Yen, which means, that US-Americans have to pay more and more Dollars for products, which are produced in Japan. So this could be the reason for rising prices in US, if (!) the Roland products are actually produced in Japan and paid in Yen, which I'm not sure about.
On the other hand: the relation between Yen and Euro keeps stable at the moment, which could be the reason for unchanged european prices during the last few months.

Arndt wrote:What I'm saying is, that the US Dollar weakens in relation to Yen, so the exchange rate decreases in relation to Yen, which means, that US-Americans have to pay more and more Dollars for products, which are produced in Japan. So this could be the reason for rising prices in US, if (!) the Roland products are actually produced in Japan and paid in Yen, which I'm not sure about.
On the other hand: the relation between Yen and Euro keeps stable at the moment, which could be the reason for unchanged european prices during the last few months.

Im fairly certain your right on this.

Cool other people like watching currencies and the global market. If the shit goes down in the U.S. economy I'll have tons of cool stuff to barter, so head to east oakland.