Nord User Forum

I’ve actually played a Nord Grand, since a friend of my son bought one during the pandemic a few years ago. It was and is his first Nord – had he asked me for advice, I would have counseled a Nord Piano first, but he saw that beautiful Grand and had the money, so he went for it.

As you would expect, the construction is top-notch, the functionality is great, and it sounds wonderful. Of course, it’s a Nord. But two years in, I can tell he’s having regrets, principally because it’s so damn heavy. My Korg SV-2 is just under 40 pounds and that’s about all I can take anymore. In my old days as a guitarist I lugged a Vox AC-30 around and finally put casters on it. Well, you can’t put casters on a Nord Grand, which pushes close to 50 delightful pounds. This is a keyboard meant to sit in your home or studio and not move.

His other regret is that now that he’s become a Nordie, he has realized that he doesn’t have drawbars and/or the synth features of the Electro and Stage, and he could have had those for the same $$ he spent on the Grand. At the time an 88-key Stage 3 cost more, but it doesn’t now. He's already made murmurs about selling the Grand and getting a Stage 3 - and I've seen other posts online with Grands for sale, some at please-buy-this prices. Of course then they add in the giant shipping charges, or expect you to drive through four states for local pickup only.

For these reasons my guess is the Grand will never be a good seller, and go quietly into the night in the next few years. Another more esoteric reason might be that if Nord really wants to sell a piano for the family room, they might consider offering it in black or natural wood. I know we think the blood red is cool, but it doesn’t always match the drapes.

For just 2 kg more than stage 3 88 i dont think the weight of this instrument is a problem..

I started with stage 3 but i find the keybed very low quality and no triple sensor .. when i tryed the grand i notice very much the difference of the keybed action and the triple sensor also which allowed me to express more feel when playing piano.. so thats why i sold stage 3 88 for grand. Which i never regret it by the musical point of view.. i will regret it only when i will need to sell it because its not so famous and not so much in wishlist of keyboard players like stage 3

I own Nord Grand. It's big but like @M1tsos said it's actually not that heavy. It's clearly lighter than Roland RD-series or Kawai MP-series. If you look its appearance it's more like Kawai VPC1 which is 29.5kg while Nord Grand is 20.9kg. Then we come to main problem which I feel is relevant here. Nord Grand looks like those most grandpianolike hammer action stage pianos but its keyboard isn't that good. Before NGrand I had Kawai's flagship digital home piano which had excellent piano action. I must say when I got NGrand I was little disappointed because I was expecting something like. NGrand has Kawai's keyboard but it's obviously not the best one. Well why would Kawai give that to their competitor... This been said Grand is probably the best piano keyboard Nord has. (Though I haven't tested new Nord Piano)

How discouraging is your post for potential Grand buyers. You posted good points but you did not need to add in the subject line - 'will it last'.
I researched before buying mine for home use. If I had been gigging, I would not have bought a Grand.

To me, it's pretty clear that the Grand is a one-of-a-kind product.
For gigging it's bigger, heavier, less rugged (all that red laquer that can be scratched and bumped!), more limited and more expensive than the Nord Piano 5, so the gigging pianist will almost always choose the NP5.
For home use it's MUCH more expensive than console pianos with comparable or better actions, wood furniture and quality integrated amplification. And it's VERY red (especially coupled with the red wood stand and red music holder and possibly Nord Monitors), so it's a tough sell as a furniture piece.

So it's a kind of in-between: an expensive home piano that can be detached from the stand and taken on the road now and then... but at that price points there are very serious alternatives from other brands.
I suppose its target are die-hard Nordists who don't care about price, are demanding piano players, want the best action, care a lot about looks ...and have a total-red furniture at home. But I guess that's a pretty small market segment.

A very courageous forum member @JohannesF had his Nord Grand refinished with gloss black laquer, in the style of a real piano. As much as I like Nord red, I must say that the results are absolutely stunning! And I agree that they would probably sell many more if they offered at least the alternative to buy black or red.

That's really cool! Thanks for sharing @Spider and I agree that in the NG case it would make sense for Nord to offer also the (gloss) black finish.

The fact that the panel is already black on NG helps a lot anyway, recoloring is much easier as it is limited to the wooden parts, should not be that expensive either (to paint or even to have new panels done in black and keep the red originals in case of resale)

If my post sounded too negative I wanna add something: While key action was a little disappoinpointment - as a former Kawai owner (both acoustic and CS-7 piano) - i was expecting little better action, still combination of this NGrand keyboard + Nord sound is great! I don’t regrect trading CS-7 to Grand. Soundwise Nord beats Kawai.

Ecaroh wrote:If my post sounded too negative I wanna add something: While key action was a little disappoinpointment - as a former Kawai owner (both acoustic and CS-7 piano) - i was expecting little better action, still combination of this NGrand keyboard + Nord sound is great! I don’t regrect trading CS-7 to Grand. Soundwise Nord beats Kawai.

The key action at all the other nord instruments its a lot worst for piano playing compared to grand.. grand is the best key action nord has to offer right now

I think the Grand is Nord's attempt to enter the Console market. They look and see that Yamaha is making gobs of money selling "home pianos" to families for much less than an acoustic upright would cost, and these digitals have the added appeals of being flexible to play other kinds of sounds, and be interesting to other family members who might not be taken with a fussy old Baldwin upright.

But Nord also knows that its buyer-base is mostly boutique-oriented players of some experience who like to buy expensive new toys (I'm one, and so are most of you, I would guess). They had to make it appealing to us too...so they stuck on the best keypad in their factory because they know most of us have been bitching about their Fatar stuff forever and day. Unfortunately for us, there isn't any other reason to buy one...the Piano is more portable and has all the same functionality and the Stage is, well, the Stage...given the $$ just about any Nord fan will want a Stage first.

So unless we too are shopping for console piano for our kiddos to learn on, we Nordies aren't much of a market. Plus there is the problem of the red. It's time to start offering a color palette. Parents don't want that thing sitting in their living room, looking like some big circus organ. Man, Clavia needs to hire some marketing staff who can get ownership to get into the 21st century.