Nord User Forum

[Julian]

I'm thinking ... Does Electro model sell better in the US ?? ... Is that why E5 was launched at NAMM? .... Maybe Frankfurt will be the place where Nord unveil Stage 3 ... give me some hope Nord !! http://musik.messefrankfurt.com/frankfu ... ommen.html

[yubby67]

Well, here in Boston / New England I see more Electro players than Nord Stage players in several genres. It's certainly more popular and more cost effective. A lot of players don't need all the controller functions and layering / splitting / external / pitch / mod wheel that the Stage has. Most players I see using the Electro at gigs usually have it on a 2nd tier with another master keyboard or DP on the bottom and are just using it for organ and/or wurly / Rhodes / clav and a few basic synth or brass sounds.

I have a Stage 2 compact and I am also waiting VERY patiently for the Stage 3! I love the Stage as a master keyboard and an all in one board at certain gigs. I have a LONG wish list that I hope Nord addresses with either the Stage 3 and/or a new OS sometime this year.

The NE5 looks cool and I might go for that if I was in the market for an Electro, but the price is also getting closer to the Stage range. I'm also disappointed that there has been no Stage 3 release yet nor an OS update for the Stage in a long time, but I see the marketing reasons here. I would certainly choose the Nord E5 over an SK-1, now that it has splits / layers. That's probably the market they are trying to close the gap on... I have an SK1 and don't really care too much for it.

[jazzystu]

After I quit my rhodes/clav/mini rig for gigging, I want one 88 note thing which does everything. The E4D and E5 are expensive boards. If I'm getting big money out, I'll get a bit more out for everything. The Stage has always been close to "everything". The electro falls short in several key areas. If I am paying car money, I want a car, not a motorbike.

[Spider]

ok, I always stayed away from the "guess what the new Nord will be" mania, as we know perfectly well that it's pretty much pointless.
But the new Electro 5 features got my fantasy going, and... it's a boring afternoon with little to do in the office.

So I was wondering: while it's pretty straightforward to imagine that the new features (large screen, improved memory etc) will be incorporated in the next incarnation of the Piano and Stage lines, I was wondering what they might do to improve the C2D.

Obvioulsy the new large screen with advanced menu-setlist-control features would be welcome (especially being able to see the programmed drawbars settings), but there's hardly any space for it on the control panel.
Extending the panel to fit a new screen would mean changing the whole architecture of the instrument, something Clavia has never done (the chassis has always been basically the same between C1, C2 and C2D), and that would also go against Clavia's mantras of compactness and portability.
On the other hand, a wider chassis would mean more room for less cramped controls, and maybe even allow for the extra octave of reverse-coloured keys.

Apart from this, would it make sense for Clavia to issue a C3D with sample playback capabilities? It's true that players looking for an all-in-one keyboard already have plenty of options with the Electro, Piano and Stage lines, and developing a new all-around instrument would increase the internal competition between Clavia products.
But it's also true that the SK2 (and to a lesser extent, the Mojo) offer a variety of sounds that the C2D lacks.
On the practical side, having the ability to split and layer on two 5-octaves manuals gives more real estate than any 73- or 88-keys board, so such a machine would have its own unique capabilities differentiating it from the other Clavia products.

I know this brambling is totally useless, but it's always nice to waste a few minutes wondering about the unforeseeable fate!