Which Nord Keyboard To Buy
This 'unofficial' Forum is dedicated to the Clavia Nord Keyboards, including the Nord Stage, Nord Electro and Nord Piano. Discuss any issues around Nord's keyboards, share your favorite patches, samples, and music. We are not affiliated with Clavia!
which nord keyboard to buy
The Nord Stage 3 is our outstanding new flagship instrument featuring our latest award-winning technologies including the Nord Lead A1 Synth Engine with sample playback, our acclaimed Nord C2D organ, a greatly enhanced Piano Section and extensive hands-on Effects - all in one exceptional performance keyboard.
Made the big decision I want to go ahead and buy a Nord keyboard, just unsure on which model. I'll be gigging around and need it to be versatile for whatever sounds may come. I've always preferred a more hammer action keyboard, but don't need to have a full 88-key keyboard. Stuck between the Nord Electro 6HP and the Nord Stage 3 (can't decide on a model there). There's a significant price difference between the two models and I'm just wondering as someone who's never had a super premium model keyboard, will I really need the extra capabilities the Stage 3 offers? I don't want to be 4-years down the road and regret the decision, but also would really have to stretch financially to get the Stage 3... any suggestions? anything helps, thanks!
The 88-key models are aimed squarely at pianists, and it's likely they'll come with hammer action, weighted keyboards to give that acoustic grand feel. The smaller sizes are aimed more at organists and synth players (or pianists with not much room!). They tend to be fitted with waterfall or synth-type keybeds.
Its predecessor featured highly in this guide previously, so what improvements can potential owners of the fourth generation Nord Stage look forward to? Well, the sample memory has been doubled, with an extensive new collection of samples available, but the emphasis seems to have been on the layout of the front panel, which has been redesigned from the ground up to improve onstage workflow.
The Stage 4 comes with complete access to the extensive Nord Piano Library, which is chock-a-block with grand pianos, uprights, vintage electric pianos, harpsichords and clavinets, and now features dynamic compression and Unison on the piano section.
The control panel is orderly and coherent, and the quality of the knobs, sliders, switchgear and OLED screens is first class. All sorts of sophisticated splits, layers, songs, seamless transitions and crossfades are possible without laborious menu-diving. The quality of the keyboard, indeed the whole unit, is faultless, but that's to be expected at this price.
If internal speakers are a deal-breaker, for a little extra outlay you can plump for the SV2-S model, also available in both 73-key and 88-key flavours, which comes in a cool, silvery Airstream-style finish.
The keyboard is Roland's premium PHA-50 progressive hammer-action model with escapement and wood/plastic hybrid keys with ivory feel. This gives a 'grand' feel, so acoustic pianists will be right at home. Organists and synth players may need to adjust their playing styles accordingly.
There are two sound engines. Roland's V-Piano engine takes care of the acoustic models, while its SuperNatural engine delivers the electric pianos. V-Piano sounds are entirely modelled, which gives the added advantage of full-keyboard polyphony for a fuller, more authentic acoustic piano experience. SuperNatural sounds are partially sample based and have a max polyphony of 128.
It's a given that Roland has chosen to shine the spotlight brightly on the piano sounds with the RD-2000. Nevertheless, it also features an additional 1,100 sounds that cover everything from vintage synths to brass. You can map different sounds to eight separate key range zones and save up to 100 different snapshots of your entire keyboard setup, making performances less of a performance.
Yamaha has specified a triple sensor, graded hammer action keyboard on the CP88 model because it's the one most likely to appeal to pianists. The very similar, but more compact, CP73 features a balanced key action more suited to EP players. We found both to be fast and expressive, just different.
Although the PX-S3100 betrays its amateur leanings a bit with its onboard speaker system, 200 auto-accompaniment styles and dual-headphone outs (one for teacher, one for student), the range of sounds on offer is a decent 700, a big improvement over the cheaper PX-S1100 which only offers a rather paltry 18 tones.
Just be aware that Casio have had to make some, well, let's just call them optimisations, to squeeze an entire 88-key weighted hammer action keyboard into such a small enclosure. Some users seem to love the action, but others are less keen, so it's worth trying before you buy.
Kawai digital pianos are known for three things: they sound extraordinary, they have some of the finest keyboard feel/actions in the business and they look like they've been designed with a ruler and set square. If you can live with the ingot-style looks they're fabulous pianos.
True to form, Kawai has dubbed the MP 11 SE as 'the pianist's stage piano'. Certainly, the Grand Feel keyboard, which boasts the longest wooden keys with the longest pivot (accurately mimicking a grand piano's keys) is very seductive if that level of authenticity is critical to your playing style.
There are a further 12 solid electric piano sounds that include reed, tine and FM models. All can be played through Kawai's thorough amp modelling section, which includes five thinly disguised imitations of famous vintage amps.
The Numa X Piano GT is a slightly different take on the stage piano. Not satisfied with it just being a performance-ready keyboard, Fatar-owned Studiologic has developed the Numa X Piano GT to assume the role of mixer and audio interface too.
First the basics. This is a handsome looking keyboard that looks particularly characterful with its wooden end cheeks, coloured LED encoders and colour screen. It's refreshing to see a brand moving away from the usual mono black slabs of plastic and aluminium.
The premium Fatar Grand Touch graded hammer action keyboard with escapement and aftertouch feels fast and expressive, authentically like the real thing. Moving up, the top panel is remarkably spartan. There's a master volume, four rotary encoders with coloured LEDs, a TFT coloured screen surrounded by input and navigation buttons, a main dial/joystick, an eight-button sound bank and finally encoders for insert effects and master effects.
Where it gets interesting is that four sounds, or zones, can be played at the same time. Each zone is allocated a colour that's reflected on the screen or on the rotary encoders whenever it is being adjusted in some way. So, it's easy to keep track of which sound you're working on.
While the costlier RD2000 featured further up in the pecking order gets the premium, wood-hybrid PHA-50 keyboard action, the RD-88 gets the same PHA-4 keybed as that used in Roland's mid-range home and portable pianos, from the entry-level FP-10 portable right up to the more costly RP-701 and HP-702 home digital models. However, the RD-88 is considerably lighter - two-thirds the weight, in fact - with a form factor not a great deal larger than the actual keyboard itself, which when considering a stage piano to lug from gig to gig is a very big tick in the box indeed.
Despite all these features, and we've only touched the surface here, the SP7 is remarkably straightforward to use. It really is just a matter of selecting a patch via the sound bank buttons, which are to the right of the screen, and hitting the fully-weighted hammer action keyboard.
But how does it sound? Dexibell uses its proprietary 'True 2 Life' technology (yes, another flowery descriptor) to produce patches which, it turns out, is a sampling/modelling hybrid approach. Lots of music brands use sampling, modelling or a combination of the two but Dexibell claims to do things a little differently to max out the quality.
Polyphony governs how many notes can be played at the same time. It's not to be confused with the closely related timbrality, which governs how many different sounds can be played at the same time. The higher the polyphony, the more likely it is that your stage piano will be multi-timbral too.
High polyphony is very important for classical pianists. Sure, they've only got a maximum of ten fingers, so what's the big deal? Here's just one example. Imagine a concert pianist playing a long, fast legato run with the sustain (damper) pedal engaged. That beautiful cascade of notes is going to sustain for ages, with all the individual sounds running into one another. Limited polyphony will cut some of those notes off early, which is clearly undesirable!
Stage pianos commonly have features known as splits and layers or layering. If your piece requires a funky bassline with a lead synth being played over the top of it then you can split your keyboard into two. Perhaps the bottom third will be assigned to the bass sounds, freeing up the rest for the synth.
The outstanding new flagship instrument features our latest award-winning technologies including the Nord Lead A1 Synth Engine with sample playback, our acclaimed Nord C2D organ, a greatly enhanced Piano Section and extensive hands-on Effects - all in one exceptional performance keyboard.
Sample PlaybackThe Nord Stage 3 Synth section has powerful sample playback capabilities and comes with an outstanding selection of samples from our new Nord Sample Library 3.0. All samples can be tweaked creatively inside the Lead A1 Synth Engine and it is even possible to create and transfer your own samples using the Nord Sample Editor. Flexible FiltersThe Synth section features 6 Filter types: Classic Transistor Ladder Filter (LP M), Low Pass 12 and 24, Band Pass, High Pass and a powerful new combined Low Pass and Band Pass (LP+BP) Filter. The Filter section also includes a dedicated Filter Drive with 3 amount settings, as well as selectable keyboard tracking amount (1/3, 2/3 and full).Syncronizable LFO and Arpeggiator The Synth section features an Arpeggiator and LFO that can be easily synced to the Stage 3 Master Clock for perfect timing with other elements of the Stage 3, including its effects. 041b061a72