Nord User Forum

[Gustavo]

Hi there everyone!

I was thinking the other day that some of the overdrive/distortion on the NS2 is not totally to my liking and I was wondering if anyone has any experience with overdrive pedals. I am ok on the Organ department ATM, I am perhaps getting a Neo Vent some day but for my Rhodes, I was thinking to get some good overdrive that is not aggressive sounding. I have seen a lot of them and I think that I am between the Vox Ice 9 and the Ibanez Tube Screamer. The Ice 9 has a little somthing I like, i have tested them with guitars but never with a keyboard, so I am worried that they could act as High Pass Filters or something like that.

So does anyone have any suggestions? Does anyone have an Ice 9 or Tube Screamer handy to test with a Nord Stage / Electro and see how it acts up to the Rhodes sound?

Thanks all

[bdodds]

I'm interested in the results of this. In the past I've used vintage tube amps, but that's obviously not desirable for acoustic piano.

[Gustavo]

Well today I went to another musical instruments store and I decided to try out the ICE 9 and the Ibanez Tube Screamer with the Nord Stage 2.

The ice 9 did not sound good. due to all the different frequencies, it sounded distorted (not in the usual way).

then the Tube Screamer came. It sounded very good . Although the guy warned me that it must be specifically the version that is above, since the other versions aparently wont work very good with keyboards (due to frequencies). The Organs through that thing sounded expectacular. Although I could honestly say that for 200 euro, I think it is not worth it unless you are specifically going for a distorted/overdriven sound, a la Deep Purple.

But what I did found usefull was a small delay, the memory Toy. Now some guitarrists complain about it not being so good, etc. But I found that if you use it and just apply a little bit of delay and let your signal go through it you will get a more "vintage" sound compared to the more "crispy" and modern sound you have. I tried it out with the synth section (since I am getting this for the Mopho) and I found that it made it sound more vintage. Then again, so might be true if you use a monotron in your synth path (say assign all synth to output 3 and send that to a monotron that would act only as a filter).

Still, I got the Memory toy that was only 74 Euro (for my Mopho) but I found that the 200 Euro Tube Screamer was just not justifiable. I even tried some "vintage" leslie sims and decided those were also not worth it. I do not remember their names but they were not the Neo Vent.

[RedLeo]

In my experience, guitar-oriented distortion/overdrive pedals are not good for adding more subtle "vintage amp" type sounds. They produce lots of high frequency overtones. As they're designed to be put through a guitar amp, it's expected by the designers that these overtones will be heavily smoothed out by the amp's loudspeakers to produce the finished sound. This simply won't work with studio monitors or powered PA speakers, they're too hi-fi. Also the inputs are designed for very low level guitar signals, the output of any modern keyboard (even a Nord ) is simply far too great.

One thing that might be worth trying could be an guitar amp simulator of some description, although that would not really be a cheap option. I have a couple of Sansamp Character series analog amp simulators, a Vox AC30 and a Fender combo. If I get a chance in the next few days, I'll dig them out and see what they sound like with some EPs and the Clav.

But what I did found usefull was a small delay, the memory Toy. Now some guitarrists complain about it not being so good, etc. But I found that if you use it and just apply a little bit of delay and let your signal go through it you will get a more "vintage" sound compared to the more "crispy" and modern sound you have.

Using an old "lo-fi" delay line is a great way of giving character to sounds. You can also use one to simulate reverb on recordings as you can add a lot of it while not cluttering up your mix as much as a modern reverb. It's particularly useful on electric guitars but works with vintage synth and keyboards sounds as well. I also once had a small spring reverb unit which was just amazing. Rubbish on drums, but luscious on pads and analog leads. For DAW users, there are surely a ton of plugins that would emulate these vintage kinds of devices, as well as choruses, phasers, flangers and whatever else comes to mind.