Nord User Forum

Playing in a Grateful Dead/Phish Jam band
Have a Nord Electro 5D73 and need a top synth/board for more bread and butter sounds.
Whats your Vote:

MODX61
Roland Fantom 06/6
Yamaha CK61
Roland FA06

From your selection I‘d choose the Roland fantom 06 if you mean the one which is at about 1.300 €/$.

I‘ve never got warm with the software structure of Yamaha, so you could only make friend with them yourself. To add another brand: my favourite over all would be the korg kross 2 61. Perhaps this older thread can help:

https://www.norduserforum.com/nord-elec ... ml#p172248

Cheers from Germany

Deadkeys wrote:Playing in a Grateful Dead/Phish Jam band
Have a Nord Electro 5D73 and need a top synth/board for more bread and butter sounds.
Whats your Vote:

MODX61
Roland Fantom 06/6
Yamaha CK61
Roland FA06

I would say that your Electro is as good or better than any of those others for what I think are the typical bread and butter sounds... e.g. piano, electric piano, organs, clavinet, some pads, and basic strings and brass (though beyond the basics, those are not a Nord strength).

Of what you've listed, I'd say the Fantoms are in general probably the best sonic complement of the ones you mentioned, for being strongest of those boards when it comes to synthy sounds and orchestral sounds, i.e. the areas where Electro is weakest. But I don't really know what sounds you need for the music you're doing. Maybe you can be more specific about the sounds you'd like this second board to cover?

@Deadkeys, have you already made up your mind and decided what to buy?

You may have seen this Grateful Dead’s key rig info:

https://ryanstorm.substack.com/p/the-gr ... d-rigs-yes

The main area which a nord electro leaves untouched, more or less, are the Moog sounds, be it Polymoog or Minimoog, and the Prophets. An electro playing samples only will remain too static. There are some cheap Behringer synths on the market which may help you even more than the Rolands or Yamahas.

Cheers from Germany

Yes, if moogy/prophety sounds are what you're after, none of the boards listed in the OP would be my first choices. One could, of course, look at some actual boards from Moog or Sequential/DSI. Some other nice choices that come to mind could be Nord Wave 2, King Korg, Studiologic Sledge. The Nord 5D also is pretty decent at integrating an external module, so something like a Roland SE-02 played from your Nord might do the trick, if you need the sounds but not necessarily more keys to play them from.

I have not tried this yet - but I believe the upper right surface of the the Nord Electro 5D is virtually the perfect size to fit any of the Roland Boutique series (11" x 5").

This would include the SE-02, their Moog emulation. Haven't heard the greatest love for it, but could be a very convenient setup. I'm basically imaging grafting a synth section where the Stage would have one. I lean towards the JX-8P myself, but there's a SH-101 and the list goes on. With a bit of velcro, you could keep on going.

Curious if anyone's tried this combo?