NS4 Panel Versions 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3

[anotherscott]

The revs pretty much all relate to physical changes on the panels. Any change to internal functionality would be done with OS updates and would be available to all revs, with the rare but notable exceptions where functionality was added that specifically requires the button layout change to make it accessible.

AFAIK, Nord has never stated whether a rev can or cannot denote changes having nothing to do with the front panel, so that seems like supposition. And if revs never refer to such changes (instead of or in addition to front panel changes), how do you explain the revs in which nobody has been able to identify any change to the panels?

Companies *do* sometimes make running changes to various components. Maybe they do it to fix issues, or to enable a new feature, or to address part availability from a supplier, whatever. Sometimes the change is publicized, sometimes not but people can still find out because there is some difference that can somehow be noticed, or because the companies later come out with an update which only applies to units with specific serial numbers, or a service center gets a note that a repair/adjustment may be done differently depending on whether the unit is above or below a certain serial number, that kind of thing. It is not at all unheard of, and there's certainly a reasonable possibility that Nord sometimes makes such internal running changes as well. If Nord chooses to denote a manufacturing change with a new printed rev instead of tracking their versions by serial number, why would you assume that the rev change can only possibly refer to changes in buttons/labels, and would be precluded from being used to refer to any other, less obvious change? Especially, again, when sometimes people fail to find any external visual change between one rev and another?

[cgrafx]

<quote>AFAIK, Nord has never stated whether a rev can or cannot denote changes having nothing to do with the front panel, so that seems like supposition. And if revs never refer to such changes (instead of or in addition to front panel changes), how do you explain the revs in which nobody has been able to identify any change to the panels?</quote>

Having gone back and re-read the entire thread, I don't see any rev that doesn't describe a physical panel change. Again, there is no indication that Nord has specifically made a keybed change, only a single data point of one user that thinks it feels different (which is completely in the range of manufacturing variation). Even the statement that they were both new, doesn't negate that fact that, one of them was manufactured at an earlier date and could have easily been sitting in the store and been played on for sufficient time for the spings to wear in a bit versus the new unit, which may simply have been more recently pulled from a box.

It would be very odd to make a keybed change mid-product cycle unless there was some sort of manufacturing issue or Fatar had made the change to address a problem. Neither of those scenarios is documented anywhere or likely.

Either way, this discussion has now reached a point where it's no longer useful. We will simply have to agree to disagree.

peace

[anotherscott]

Having gone back and re-read the entire thread, I don't see any rev that doesn't describe a physical panel change.

I thought there was a rev somewhere in there where no panel change had been confirmed, but I may have just missed it, sorry if that's the case.

Even the statement that they were both new, doesn't negate that fact that, one of them was manufactured at an earlier date and could have easily been sitting in the store and been played on for sufficient time for the spings to wear in a bit versus the new unit, which may simply have been more recently pulled from a box.

Supposedly, both were new boxed units (one simply being older unsold stock), but it is not impossible that that was not in fact the case, I can't really be certain.

It would be very odd to make a keybed change mid-product cycle unless there was some sort of manufacturing issue or Fatar had made the change to address a problem.

There are other reasons a manufacturer may make a running change to a product besides addressing a problem. For example, its could be to make what they feel is some improvement to the design, or to lower its cost to manufacture, or to accommodate a change made by one of their suppliers, who knows? Anyway, I'm not saying it has happened here, but I do know of cases where Korg and Kurzweil have made changes to the actions they had been using in a given keyboard, it can happen.

But as I said earlier, I am perfectly willing to accept the possibility that I experienced a variation having nothing to do with the rev (e.g. a unit-to-unit variation). I'm just putting out my experience, and maybe over time, we'll see if people are finding such a pattern or not. I'm just a single data point.

We will simply have to agree to disagree.

And our disagreement is really pretty minor, I think. Neither of us knows for sure. We only disagree in our degree of how feasible we think such a change could possibly be.

[hughes]

Following up on RevA/RevB firmware behavior differences:

I already tried Shift+”xx” … at this time, new functionality from RevB is not accessible with RevA.
This includes
* Rotary Ambient/Close stored per patch (RevA is global in sound settings)
* Poly Mode for B3 percussion

Thanks for reporting this important info.

It is quite strange actually, unless Rev B also provides some additional computing power and/or memory space (for firmware to accomodate the additional code require or for Programs) that may justify why Rev A cannot support those features.

Many thanks, I agree.
Same with Panel Rev 1.4.
I tried it with every OS update with shift-function, holding the button long and by changing the global parameter and saving the patch, but it didn‘t work.
Important: The actual manual 1.4x ignores this change and does not describe this function correctly for older Panel versions.

Edit: I reported this to Nord support and keep you informed.
Edit 2: 14. Feb 2025, I‘m still waiting.

As I promised to keep you informed:
After initial multiple confirmations from Nord Support that they would take care of the problem and an apology for taking so long to reply, I didn't get an answer despite repeated requests.

[Matt-new]

Is there any mapping between hardware revisions with Fatar keybed types and revisions (if any)?

[WannitBBBad]

Is there any mapping between hardware revisions with Fatar keybed types and revisions (if any)?

Not that I'm aware of. There has been some discussion as to whether Nord changed a keybed in the Stage 4, however, as Nord kept the same problematic HP76 keybed in the Stage 3 throughout its life cycle, I doubt any keybeds have changed in any revision of the Stage 4.

[Melies59]

Hello,

I'm taking advantage of this discussion on panels, to ask a question about the drawbars colors.

On my NS3 Compact (last revision), the 2 lowest drawbars are brown (like on most of Hammond B3), but on my NS4 73 (v2.3 rev B), they are black.

Were those drawbars always black on the NS4 (or brown on previous revisions maybe ?) ?

I don't really care that much but just for information on panels evolutions. And judging from the pictures on the Nord site, it seems that there is no more brown drawbars on the new Organ 3 (but that was the case on the C2D).

[Normski]

On my NS3 Compact (last revision), the 2 lowest drawbars are brown (like on most of Hammond B3), but on my NS4 73 (v2.3 rev B), they are black.
Were those drawbars always black on the NS4 (or brown on previous revisions maybe ?) ?

Well I've just looked at my stage 3 and stage 4 rev 2.1 and you are correct. I've never that noticed before.
My stage 4 compact 2.1 has black drawbars on the two lowest.

[dimmu]

Bought a new Nord Stage 4 compact. Just received it it is rev 2.3 B