Nord User Forum

Ok. These questions may seem a little hair-brained but they are serious.

Has anyone attempted to alter/change the action of an Electro HP action?

Why?you ask..

Because in my testing of the 6HP action it's quite 'stiff' for my liking, particular in the upper register (as it's not a graded action).

This got me thinking.

I have now watched a few videos of people dismantling their Electros, and whilst not a recommended idea it doesn't seem too complicated to open one up.

Before you critique me for my stupidity, yes.. I understand why a HP action has been used.. it most closely resembles a Fender Rhodes for example.
However, with some intervention, I wonder whether I can alter the action to better suit acoustic piano playing. This change would also be quite suitable for organ and EP playing as well in my opinion.

Now, to my questions....

Q1: what is responsible for the 'stiffness" I am sensing? Is it springs or weights within the action itself?

When I say stiffness I mean, it definitely requires more physical weight to depress the keys than on my Roland RD2000, for example. It's also stiffer than my grand piano. Part of the stiffness I feel is related to the down weight required. Another part is related to the 'spring back pressure' as I take weight off the keyed. The pressure of the spring is slightly too strong. It pushes me off stronger than say a normal piano action.

Q2: (and importantly) will the action unchanged, wear and age in such a way as to loosen up over time?

Q3: would changing the springs on the NE6HP to something else bring about considerable change towards a lighter felling action?

Q4: how crazy would it be to somehow order a HA action from Nord and replace the HP action? Do you understand where I'm going with this question?
I played the HA action on The Nord Piano and it is certainly a friendlier action to piano playing.

I assume I am not the first person to have these thoughts.

Interesting.
I must further investigate playing acoustic piano on the SW action.
At this stage, I will play the HP action again today as well as test the SW action for acoustic pianos.

The reality for me is that the board I buy will predominantly be used for acoustic pianos.
If I was to guess I would say.. 70% acoustic pianos, 20% EPs and 10% organ. I am firstly a piano player, but I am quite a solid organist as well.

Maybe I just need to find a way to accept the HP action. I know that as a player, one adapts to their.surroundings as they go.

Right out of the box, the HP action feels sluggish on a brand new instrument. It does break in and get quicker. I speak from experience, having owned two Nord HP instruments. A friend of mine who recently purchased on NS3HP commented on how much faster and smoother the action on my 5-year-old Stage 2EX felt compared to his. Same mechanism, just different ages.

Something that is not often mentioned here regarding the SW action is the spring-back feel. Depressing the key is at most half of the piano playing experience. Where the SW feels most unnatural for piano playing is in how fast and forceful the key feels after release. While great for organ or synth playing, it’s not always suitable for piano.

I’m waiting to see if Nord replaces the TP100 with Fatar’s new TP110 action in their next HP keyboards.

Thanks for talking about the action wearing in.
I appreciate the feedback.
Such information can only come by an experienced user such as yourself.
Your comment has caused me to not stress over the initial sluggishness.
I think the Electro 6HP is the sweet spot for me as far as value for money goes.
In 12-18 months we may be discussing the Electro 7 and indeed things may change.

luts1976 wrote:Q1: what is responsible for the 'stiffness" I am sensing? Is it springs or weights within the action itself?

I don't think it has any springs in it. But there are definitely weighted hammers in it.

As for what's responsible for its feel characteristics, there are so many variables... not just how heavy the hammer mechanism is, but also things like where it is located within the key mechanism, where the point of contact is between the key and the hammer... physics can be a tricky thing. I'm not sure anyone can explain why it feels quite the way it does, unless they have an engineering degree. For example, in a video about the new TP110, they said that one change they made to improve its feel over the TP100 is that they rotated one of the pieces 90 degrees.

luts1976 wrote:Q2: (and importantly) will the action unchanged, wear and age in such a way as to loosen up over time?

I'll comment on this in my reply to Mike's post further down.

luts1976 wrote:Q3: would changing the springs on the NE6HP to something else bring about considerable change towards a lighter felling action?

As I said, I don't think it has springs. The Korg RH3 action uses springs in addition to its hammers, but I don't think every hammer action does. As an aside, though, the Korg's springs are leaf springs, and not just of a specific "force" but also of a specific size and shape that nestles into a space in the underside of the key, I wouldn't begin to know where to find different tension springs for something like that which was probably customized to begin with.

But check this video at 3:50 and 8:14... At least from what I can see there, there don't appear to be any springs in the TP100, rather the key seems to return just based on the force of gravity acting on the hammer mechanism when you release the key.

An approach that could definitely lighten the feeling of the action would be to remove weight from the hammer mechanisms. There's a thread where that idea is discussed in the context of a different keyboard, at https://www.yamahasynth.com/ask-a-quest ... bed-to-bhe - but even there, he is talking about a graded action, and altering the lower keys so that they are as light as the higher keys. Which means he's essentially talking about turning a key that works properly into another key that is known to work properly. On the non-graded TP100, it's an open question as to whether you could alter a hammer to make it lighter than it is, and still have it function correctly (e.g. because a certain amount of weight may be required for the key to return properly). Especially if indeed the key return is determined solely by gravity's affect on the hammers, altering the weight/shape of those hammers could easily have major consequences beyond how heavy the key feels to strike or hold down. And also, based again on the video above, the hammers on the TP100 are plastic rather than metal, which may complicate your ability to alter them, too.

luts1976 wrote:Q4: how crazy would it be to somehow order a HA action from Nord and replace the HP action?

Since both are Fatar actions, there's a decent chance that the wiring/interconnects would be identical, though I'm not certain. Even so, there are other ways this could go wrong. For one thing, the keys are a different size (longer), so I don't know if they would even fit in the chassis of a board that had an HP. (The height of the keys mechanisms might be different too, I don't know.) For another, it's a much heavier action, and while the HP and HA enclosures appear to be structurally similar, I couldn't swear that they haven't designed the HA models to have a bit more rigidity in the chassis. That is, though I think it's unlikely, there could conceivably be some question as to whether the HP models' chassis could safely support the added weight of a heavier set of keys over time. Third, the HA could conceivably require different velocity curve programming to best trigger the board's sound, that's something Nord could include in the ROMs of the different models, and there would be no way to put their HA velocity curve programming into their HP boards. I wouldn't expect this to be a major problem... after all, more often than not, Nord piano sounds play just fine from all different kinds of boards attached via MIDI, so again, I don't think this is a likely problem... but it's one I can't rule out, either. My point here is really, there are numerous possible variables. There's also the issue of where you would find the HA action and what it would cost, of course.

Honestly, if you're not happy with the action, even of the 6HP you liked more than the 4HP, I think you're probably best off buying another board entirely... just buy something you like the action of, instead of chasing a ghost. Not every board is right for every player, and the Electro HP may just not be the right fit for you.

luts1976 wrote:I must further investigate playing acoustic piano on the SW action.
At this stage, I will play the HP action again today as well as test the SW action for acoustic pianos.

The reality for me is that the board I buy will predominantly be used for acoustic pianos.
If I was to guess I would say.. 70% acoustic pianos, 20% EPs and 10% organ.

Some alternate boards you can consider, if neither the HP nor SW quite satisfy you:

In a semi-weighted 7x-key board for "70% acoustic pianos, 20% EPs and 10% organ," I'd also look at the Vox Continental. I found its action much better for piano playing than Nord's SW action. Nord's SW action is quite heavily sprung, again "pushing back" at you when you hold a key down, the Vox is much lighter feeling, yet still gives you far better dynamic control than you typically get on non-hammer actions. Sounds are subjectiv. I prefer Nord's piano sounds, but some people are very happy with Kronos pianos which are what you find in the Vox. I also prefer Nord's organ sound. OTOH, I prefer Vox's EPs. Each board also has some other pros and cons over the other, but I'm only talking about what you've asked about... sound and feel for pianos, EPs, and organ.

In a hammer-action 7x-key board for those same uses, I'd look at the Yamaha CP73 and YC73. The YC is much better for organ, but if your organ use is really pretty minimal, you could save money with the CP which also has the benefit of having a wider range of different piano sounds in it. Initially, I did not like the way their actions played at all, but once you load their newest software updates, there are options to tweak the velocity response, which makes a huge difference. Do if you're going to check these out in a store, it pays to download their "supplemental manuals" first to see how you can adjust the velocity while you're trying it out. You might even want to bring the OS updates with you on a USB stick, in case the floor models don't have the latest software in them. Presumably someone in the store would be willing to update their floor models for you... it's to their benefit as well. (And again, the Yamaha and Nord each have some other pros and cons relative to the other, I'm just sticking with the issues at hand.)

There are other options if you're not tied to the 7x-key size and/or the overall light travel weight that characterize all the options discussed so far.

Rusty Mike wrote:Right out of the box, the HP action feels sluggish on a brand new instrument. It does break in and get quicker. I speak from experience, having owned two Nord HP instruments. A friend of mine who recently purchased on NS3HP commented on how much faster and smoother the action on my 5-year-old Stage 2EX felt compared to his.

That's interesting, as I've been skeptical of the idea of actions actions "breaking in" over time. Certainly things can degrade, people have talked about older actions getting noisier, for example. But I'm surprised that something can really change for the better over a period of years. Something that happens with just a little bit of playing, I can kind of understand, maybe where there's some initial "something" that needs to be worked in over your first few hundred keystrokes or whatever, where it wouldn't take long for all the keys to have been sufficiently hit to get to that point. But for a gradual change over a longer term, changes that happen from a large amount of actual use, it seems to me that if they happen at all, they would not happen consistently throughout the action, if for no other reason than, over the years, most people hit the keys toward the center with much more frequency than they hit the keys at the extremes. Now if it's something environmental, i.e. something that just changes over time regardless of how much or little you play it, that could affect many keys regardless of location, and possibly all keys equally, like if it's something that dries out over time... but I have a hard time imagining such a change that would make the keys feel lighter to play. If it's just from years of playing that you feel the action lightens up, it seems to be that the middle would start feeling lighter than the extremes. Maybe what you've experienced between your board and your friends' could be subtle design changes they've made over time, or even unit to unit (or production run to production run) variation. Hmmm.

FZiegler wrote:You'll find users on the forum who exchanged the springs on a SW/waterfall keybed, be it a NE6D or a NS3C. And who liked the result.

Yes, the SW models have springs (the typical coiled type). I'm among those who thing the Nord SW boards do benefit from less tight springs. The Fatar TP/8O they use has beenoutfitted with numerous spring strengths. Nord and Dexibell use it highly sprung, Crumar (as I understand it) uses it lightly sprung, and there are others in the middle.