Nord User Forum

[kbmatson]

Hi All,

I'm a (hopefully) soon-to-be- Nord Stage 3 Compact Owner, and just have a few questions that I can't seem to find answers to on the net. I'm hoping someone will assist me here.

1) Can the Sound menu options - especially the Organ ones like tone wheel mode and key click level, be set/saved PER PROGRAM, or is it universal anytime the B3 is used?
2) using just ONE PANEL, can you have different variations of the SAME effect on the different engines? For example - can the piano have different delay settings than the synth does?
3) Does the "mono out" button in the program section sum the stereo channels to every output? In other words - does this effectively give me what most stereo keyboards provide with a L/Mono jack?
4) Can I create and load my own piano samples to the piano section of the unit, or am I always limited to the sample section for my own samples?
5) From what i can tell, it seems like a control pedal can be programmed to do organ swell - same as the actual swell pedal - is this correct?
6) Is an external keyboard limited to only being able to play one section of one panel? is there no way to just have an external keyboard "replace" the Nord one and play everything the Nord one does on a program?

Thanks - I likely will run into more questions, but that's it for now. Thanks so much, and I hope to be joining the league of Nord owners before long!
KenM

[analogika]

1) sound menu is global, not per-program.
2) each effect is available once per Panel, and can be assigned to one engine only.
3) That is my understanding. Annoyingly, it also sums both channels of the Leslie, which is really annoying and is NOT a mono-miced Leslie.
4) .npno are proprietary and reserved exclusively for Clavia’s own piano samples. User samples can only be added to the sample memory and played by the synth, and they are a single velocity layer only.
5) I’ve never connected anything to the swell pedal jack, but the FC-7 on the control panel can be used to morph stuff when I need to and works as an organ swell by default.

6) is outside my realm of experience, so I’ll leave it for others to answer.

[baekgaard]

What @analogika said.

On 6), an external keyboard can be used in either of 3 modes: Dual KB mode, Panel mode or Global mode.

In Dual KB mode, you can control one of the Panel B sound engines (but only one of them at any given time -- settings are saved with the program you use). So you can play either Organ, Piano or Synth from the external keyboard, and then everything else can be played as usual from the internal one.

In Panel mode, you can play either Panel A or B from the external keyboard (as well as from the internal, if you want). You can then play any combination of the 3 engines within either (or both...) panels, although you cannot play the remaining ones from the internal -- so you could play piano and synth on Panel B from an external keyboard but then the organ on Panel B cannot be played internally (unless you use split points and maybe transpose, etc). If you can have an external keyboard (or keyboards) send on two channels, you can even play Panel A on one and Panel B on the other.

In Global mode, using the external keyboard will be similar to playing the internal one.

[kbmatson]

Ok - thanks for the answers!

# 2,3,4,5 - just what I expected - wish #2 had more flexibility, but all this is OK
# 6 - good to hear - just what I would hope for.

#1 makes me sad - what if I want a really clean Hammond for one program like a beach-pop tune, and want to play Steppenwolf on another one?

[baekgaard]

#1 makes me sad - what if I want a really clean Hammond for one program like a beach-pop tune, and want to play Steppenwolf on another one?

With a large tongue-in-cheek smiley here: Do what you would have done with real Hammonds... have an old worn one, and a sparkling new, and play the one you need

But yes, I get your point, of course, that it could sometimes be nice to be able to change the tone -- although I find I sometimes tweak the settings based on the PA system more than the tunes I play, so having to change all programs used would be more work. So from that perspective, I'm OK with the setup as it is currently.

Just out of curiosity: Do you play many gigs where you alternate between beach-pop and Steppenwolf tunes?

[anotherscott]

#1 makes me sad - what if I want a really clean Hammond for one program like a beach-pop tune, and want to play Steppenwolf on another one?

The Rotary Drive setting and the Amp Sim Drive setting can be saved independently for each program, those would be the most important settings for the kind of thing you're talking about. (And the other settings you mention can't even be adjusted on a real B3.)

[analogika]

#1 makes me sad - what if I want a really clean Hammond for one program like a beach-pop tune, and want to play Steppenwolf on another one?

The Rotary Drive setting and the Amp Sim Drive setting can be saved independently for each program, those would be the most important settings for the kind of thing you're talking about. (And the other settings you mention can't even be adjusted on a real B3.)

Yes, it’s true that they can’t be changed on a real Hammond (nor can drive settings, at least not easily and on the fly without, say, a distortion pedal).

But then, a B3 engine cannot be switched for a Vox or a Farfisa on the fly, either, on the real thing, and that’s possible on the Stage, so it’s worth asking, and I understand the disappointment.

OTOH, those differences are pretty subtle preference matters (apart from the Leslie balance), so they’re not nearly as necessarily per-program as the EQ, drive, and other effects.

[kbmatson]

Just out of curiosity: Do you play many gigs where you alternate between beach-pop and Steppenwolf tunes?

We cover a variety of material - and i would like to go from a fairly "average" sounding B3 to a really nasty one for a few songs. Whoever said the drive and amps would handle most of that is probably right though. I'm sure I'll be fine - and like most things at gigs - the only person in the room likely to notice any difference at all is me! Having said that - it would be a nice feature.

As far as "can't do it on a real B3" answers - well ... I can't do most of what the S3 can do on a real B3, so not really a valid argument LOL!. I can't imagine it would be very hard to store those B3/Leslie parameters per program if Nord was of a mind to do it. Not sure if that's something that could come in an OS update or not at some point.

THANKS!

[baekgaard]

Just to be clear, I surely understand the reason for wishing to be able to do this as well. My point was maybe more that we get so used to all the flexibility offered by our keyboards that we may tend to forget how cumbersome it was with "the real thing" and how limited those maybe were. I sometimes miss my old Rhodes MkI -- but when I start thinking about how often it needed to be tweaked and adjusted or re-tuned, I come to appreciate the Nords even more.

So yes, it's a valid request, of course.

And as to the variety of material covered -- of course, I do that too. Especially when playing covers. I just couldn't help to smile a bit when you mentioned going from beach-pop to Steppenwolf like from one tune to the next

[kbmatson]

And as to the variety of material covered -- of course, I do that too. Especially when playing covers. I just couldn't help to smile a bit when you mentioned going from beach-pop to Steppenwolf like from one tune to the next

going from "Good Lovin' " to "Magic Carpet Ride" over the course of a few songs would be a real life example ...