Wonderful response from Alastair Leith… I wanna sound like that one day. ;)

While it's all basically been said, the emotional response, nostalgia and association are all valid areas for designers to be working. Like anything it must be done well, and with good intent.

Piezo has an attractive design, and those who love it will (hopefully!) form an attachment. If the developer treats them well, everyone will be rewarded.

Maybe some of the complaints come from the 'useless' meters -- a responsive UI might allow users to collapse the meters, if that's not too much of compromise!

A drag handle below the meters could let users progressively crop the bottom of the meters (to the top of the Piezo labels), then scale to a minimum size, before finally being hidden entirely, replaced with a central Piezo label.

...but then it may not be 'Piezo'. :)