Spider wrote:When they tried something radically different (Nord Modular) it was abandoned.
Apparently, in spite of wowing critics and developing a cadre of hard-core devotees, it was not sold in sufficient numbers to make continued development along those lines economically viable. My guess is that the wider instrument-buying public did not want to work that hard at learning/programming an instrument.
Perhaps Clearly Nord was ahead of their time, judging by the current wave of interest in hardware modular systems. I consider the Nord Modulars to be the Studebakers of the keyboard industry.
Nord is seemingly traditionalist about many things, but has broken some of their own "rules" in the past. Electros are no longer monotimbral. And the Kawai keybed and slanting front panel of the Nord Grand are departures from longstanding practice.
It would seem reasonable to expect that the lesson learned from their modular experience would be to design/build things with broad-based appeal to have a wider market demographic. 4x4 pad matrices, aux set of 8 faders, step sequencer, looper, etc. would perhaps each make a subset of people happy, but that would be a small subset and not sufficient to justify the effort/expense of developing/producing them.
Besides, the front panel of the Stage is already fairly crowded. My NS3 Compact barely has enough room for my beer, cellphone, burger, frites (curry mustard!), ashtray and shot glass. The greatest thing about the Grand is that there's room for an entire Smörgåsbord.
PS -- still waiting for cellphone charger port and combo hot/cold plate for beer/coffee. Also, a lighter would be convenient for those windy outdoor gigs.
In the words of the venerated Count Fosco, clearly the designers at Nord lack vision.