Nord Piano 5 [RELEASED]

[cphollis]

"I think at 62 years old it's time to treat myself to a decent piano action for an instrument I play a few times a week, year over year."

Yep, couldn't agree more. More and more I'm asking myself -- just what am I waiting for?

Also, I've been schlepping mine now for a while, and while it's no Nord Compact, it's really not too bad with Nord bag, wheels, carry handle, etc. Way below the threshold of being annoying.

If it's any consolation, I was initially skeptical of the NS4. Now I'm selling boards to get one. That seems to be a pattern around here.

Congrats and enjoy!

[Rusty Mike]

So after having this in my possession for a few months now, I thought I'd give a mini review.

TL;DR - love the action and the upgrade in sound quality, still don't like the weight.

There is definitely a step up in sound quality compared to the old Stage 2EX. I hear this in the Electro 6 as well, but even more so in the Piano 5. There is just an enhanced richness that I hear. Everything just has more detail, body and depth. Probably the most drastic example of this is the Imperial Bosendorfer - it is a completely different instrument in the P5. It's pretty much unplayable on the Stage or Electro (even when MIDI'd up to my RD-800); very tinkly and lifeless. In the P5 it's just full and warm. kirsty I can understand now why you enjoy playing that sample. Just night and day.

The dual piano feature is an unexpected surprise as well. It's nice to pair up two pianos that compensate for each other's weaknesses or to add some additional dimension. It's also really nice to put a Rhodes behind an AP to pad it out a bit or vice versa to add some attack to the EP. This was something I could have done with the Stage but honestly never thought of it.

Haven't made too much use of the sample engine yet, as most of what I play doesn't really need it. I did use the organ samples from WannitBBBad on a tune at last week's rehearsal. Good quality stuff and worked well for the purpose. Thank you again for posting those up!

The action is sublime. Most certainly a step up and promotes a level of finesse that I'm simply not used to in live playing. Don't know what else to say about it . . .

. . . but I wish it was lighter! The wheeled bag helps with level ground maneuvering but stairs and car load in/out is not fun. It came with the new triple pedal but I don't use it because it's so cumbersome and heavy to carry. I'll stop whining now.

Don't know if I mentioned this before. The larger US retailers are still selling the "old" RevA panel pianos, which is different from what is on Nord's product page. RevB includes buttons for vibrato and mono/legato in the synth section, which are missing from the RevA version. I had written Nord support about this to ask if the software functions were somehow mappable to the RevA panel, and the response was no. The PDF of the RevA manual is not even available for download, so it's like Piano 5 RevA is just wiped off the map by Nord, even though RevB was not available at the time of purchase (and it looks like not even now yet in the US). These are synth lead features that I'll most likely never use on a piano anyway so I'm not bothered my piano doesn't have them, but I'm still kind of miffed that I can't even get a PDF of the old manual.

Overall though, I'm really enjoying the new experience with this wonderful instrument.

[Rusty Mike]

I'm still kind of miffed that I can't even get a PDF of the old manual.

Not nice they removed it from Nord website, anyway I found the NP5 v1.1 manual at this link, from the pictures it seems to be still related to Rev A (see page 6 in particular) https://www.manualslib.com/manual/22995 ... tml#manual

[Rusty Mike]

Thanks so much for the link!