Well, I finally did it, I recently bought a Nord Stage 2 HA88 plus a load of accessories.
Wow, this really is a great piece of kit. When you set aside the the things that the board can't do so well against the stuff that the Stage 2 excels at, the negatives are certainly outshone by the fact that that what the Stage 2 does, it does exceptionally well and will enhance many a good set-up.
Whilst out of the box I found some of the pre-loaded stuff did not appear to show the instrument in the greatest light, I can't wait to get into all the sampling and creating my own sounds and hopefully add some stuff to this website - thanks again Johannes for setting up such a great website.
The board certainly gives the user a hands on approach with little or no menu diving and in next to no time I found myself coming up with some decent sounds on the synth. It is however worth reading the manual upfront just to get to know where all of the functions sit.
For all UK Nord User Forum members looking to buy a Stage 2 I can heartilly recommend you get a quote from Profesional Music Technology in Norwich. I bought a Stage 2 HA88, Nord case, Nord retro legs, Yamaha FC7, a Zoom H1 recorder and accesory pack (to help me make some samples to put in the stage), 4 x 5m decent balanced jack to jack cables and a load of midi cables all for £3,150.
This was the best deal I found in the UK and it happended to be my local store so well done to PMT for putting together such a great deal (and the keyboard arrived within 7 days) Speak to Mark at norwich@pmtonline.co.uk I am sure he will see you right.
Anyway, I hope to be able to contribute to the supply of user samples once I get my home studio back up and running (although that will mean tearing myself away from the Stage 2 for a while and I can't see that happening for a good while yet).
Cheers
