Tracii wrote: Nord as a company has made some questionable decisions regarding their product lines in recent years. The boards I would consider buying are almost all in the "Legacy" section on their website.
Well, it depends if their choices are "questionable" by you or by the market in general. Everyone's needs are different: of course if you need mostly synths and organs, Nord's current lineup will be disappointing. But from a market perspective, their shift probably makes sense.
The organ market was not so crowded when the C1-2-2D where in production. Now there are lots of competitors, all with great organ emulations and most are much cheaper than Nord. A €3K pure organ like the C2D would have very limited appeal when you can buy a Legend for less, and a Mojo for half as much. While a multi-purpose "dual manual Stage", like the Hammond SKX Pro, would be prohibitively expensive. If Hammond prices are any indication, adding the second manual would cost around 1000€, placing such an instrument in the 4-5 thousands range. How many people would buy it?
In the synth department, the Lead line was a success because of the virtual analog concept, in a time when the market was dominated by digital synths: tons of features but only accessible through arcane menus, screens and lots of button pushing. The Lead went back to having less features but a direct, fast user interface.
Fast forward to 2022? The market is again flooded with real analog synths, and many of them are cheaper than the Nord Leads. Why buy an expensive "fake" analog when you can have the real thing for less? With this in mind, I think the departure from the traditional VA concept and the move towards the A1/Wave2 architecture makes sense. Take the strong points of Nords (fast, intuitive interface with as little menus as possible) and push it to the extreme in a market that doesn't need "virtual" analog anymore.
Of course this means it may not suit MY needs and preferences anymore, but for Clavia the important thing is that it finds its unique niche in a market that's become incredibly crowded and competitive in the last 5 years.
In the meantime, they actually satisfied many of the users traditional complains (better keybeds for synths and pianos, less limited Electro/Piano models, a follower to the Nord Wave etc) while expanding their stage piano portfolio, which is by far more lucrative and reliable than the organ or synth market.
Who knows, hopefully when the current crisis is over and the market expands again, we'll see a flurry of new organs and synths by Nord. Or maybe they will surprise us again with something totally unexpected, as they historically tend to do
