General Discussion of the Nord Stage (EX), Nord Stage 2 (EX), Nord Stage 3, and Nord Stage 4 Synths, FAQ, Troubleshooting etc.

Re: Stage EX or Stage 2 ????

Postby jazzystu » 25 Mar 2011, 20:33

I wanted a Rhodes, a decent Piano and everything else was a bonus.

The clavinet is pretty damn good and most certainly a hell of a lot less noisy/unreliable than my old D6. I'm learning to work with the particular key weights.

The Wurlitzer is pretty damn good as well.

Synth wise, I can get big farty basses and singing leads. You may call me a wakner, but I prefer it to the old minimoog. It's not 100% as good as getting the furniture dancing and I like the way you can control pedal things.

The organ is pretty good. It'll do for most Hammond jobs. I got rid of my C3 when I decided to concentrate solely on the piano. It's a very passable novelty. Splitting the keyboard allows you to have the old 83800000 and 88800000 with 3rd percussion ALSO, I never got the hang of moving drawbars whilst playing and I was always a bit of a left hand bassist! With the control pedal, I can do it with my feet. It's a nice touch.

So, to recap. For a bloody good Wurlitzer, Synth, Rhodes, Piano, Organ you pay £2300. That's good value and as much as it pains me to say it, it was money well spent. Very well spent. I feel like I have done very well out of the deal.

So, for another £1100 or so (and remember the pedal, I imagine that's going to be pricey) you get a bloody good wurlitzer, synth, marginally different organ (can you tell the difference?). To me, it's somewhere between my white cap RT3 and my red cap C3 sound wise (straight). Pedal noise and the sample library. That isn't worth £1100 to me.

However, talk about a leslie socket, an inbuilt leslie choppyness control, tonewheel type ,button adjustable pitch stick range, more assignable footswitch sockets (one for the organ A or B), a slightly better synth (let's bring back the EQ and the unison knobs please), more memory and then we get to the real value of £1100 extra.

The effects are pretty good too. I remember the lash up I used to run the rhodes and clav through and it was noisy and sh%t. Sure, they were gritty instruments, but the Nord is so damn good.

This is going the way of computer processors. They are getting to the point of having a "that's it" instrument and in the meantime are dithering their way to it. I think the Nord 2 is the intermediate between the "the last instrument I buy" and the EX, which is a very very very good instrument lacking in pedal noise and sample playback. For £1100 I can live without pedal noise and the awesome mellotron samples.

I would be pissed off if they had produced a Rhodes style auto-pan rather than the schoolboy error one on the Stage.
Last edited by jazzystu on 31 Jul 2012, 12:21, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Stage EX or Stage 2 ????


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Re: Stage EX or Stage 2 ????

Postby anotherscott » 25 Mar 2011, 21:28

jazzystu wrote:marginally different organ (can you tell the difference?)


I haven't heard the Stage EX or Stage 2 organs. However, I can definitely tell the difference between an Electro 2 organ and an Electro 3 organ, and I expect the difference will be along those lines. At least from the E2 to the E3, I found the difference to be dramatic.


jazzystu wrote:So, for another £1100 or so ...you get a bloody good wurlitzer, synth, marginally different organ...Pedal noise and the sample library.


I wasn't aware that the Wurlitzer was any different. But yes, the synth is much more capable (full LFO in addition to vibrato, full 3-stage envelope controls, arpeggiator, high pass/band pass/notch filters)... I've already talked about the organ, and yes to the sample library, which is huge. But you also left out some pretty nice things... like twice the piano library RAM, selectable release on the pianos, master clock, sweepable mid on the EQ, MIDI over USB, programmable transpose, many more storable presets, and an upgraded keyboard mechanism on the 76 and 88.


jazzystu wrote:However, talk about a leslie socket, an inbuilt leslie choppyness control, tonewheel type ,button adjustable pitch stick range, more assignable footswitch sockets (one for the organ A or B), a slightly better synth (let's bring back the EQ and the unison knobs please)


I doubt we'll see a leslie socket, I think it's too much of a niche feature for this board, I think they will leave that for the "purists" who go for a 2-manual C2. I'm not sure what you mean by choppiness on the Leslie, but the Leslie effect is supposed to have been improved from the older model. Tonewheel type is selectable, just like on the E3. I'm not sure the Unison knob of the EX is necessarily really more useful than the Unison button arrangement of the S2.

Whether it's worth the difference is an individual choice, of course. But there really are a lot of improvements.
Last edited by anotherscott on 31 Jul 2012, 12:21, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Stage EX or Stage 2 ????

Postby Lyonart » 26 Mar 2011, 15:57

Deciding which one to go for ultimately depends upon what you need the board to do.

Whilst the Electro 3 is a great board, it has its limitations. I too considered purchasing an E3 when they were first launched but for live peformances in my band I needed more flexibility which drew me to the Stage EX. However, knowing that the Stage EX also had some limitations and it was only a matter of time before the Stage 2 was released, I held off buying. Whilst I can see there are also limitations with the Stage 2, I am about to buy an 88 key version and use my existing (and ageing) Roland XP-30 as a second board using the dual-keyboard option, because I can see that it will do the job I need it to do, and do it very well.....

I think we all have to remember that, unless you have a bottomless pit of money, every keyboard will have its limitations, its pros and cons and often its down to user preference. If you follow jazztstu's advice above you will always be waiting for the next Stage release. Updates are a fact of life and you just have to decide whether the board you wanna buy will do what you want it to do for the forseeable future.

Good luck.
Last edited by Lyonart on 31 Jul 2012, 12:21, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Stage EX or Stage 2 ????

Postby nordborg » 14 Apr 2011, 21:11

If you're still considering the original stage EX88, there's a screaming deal on one at http://hellomusic.com for a limited time.
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