by tacitus » 11 Dec 2017, 13:15
I must be an organ geek as I got to the end of the original post. I agree with pretty much all of that, and it is a great practice organ, effectively thrown in for free with the Hammond and Vox organs (and the Farfisa for the two guys who wanted that). That said, I’ve used it live and, just like using a Hammond clone, 99.something% of people don’t know the difference. I use PA rather than hi-if speakers, with sub and satellites, and once in a church acoustic, some of the sounds that sound a bit crummy on headphones sound more natural (this is in a 13th century village church in England). But of course, the times I need the trumpet solo are few, and after the few basic stops on the church’s own organ, it’s bracing in a medicinal sort of way (small doses work best). I’ve not run into polyphony problems, but tend to use it as a baroque organ, not a romantic one.
Overall, I think you get an organ like most real ones, where there are nearly always a couple of stops that don’t get used much, for any sort of reason but often because they go badly out of tune, or they’re too loud to integrate in most registrations.
My next project is to get a worship band together, and I’ll probably be in Hammond mode for that. But nice to know a touch of a button brings back the pipe sounds. Or I might use a piano module...
The few organists I’ve talked to about the Nord have decided it doesn’t work before they’ve tried it themselves, but when you can actually carry the thing one-handed, and get it and its speakers in a small car, they are rather missing the point!