Transitioning from a Lead (and Electro) to a Stage

[temmerling]

Hi - I'm considering buying a Stage (3?) to replace my Electro 4 and my Nord Lead (it's an original Lead, not a 'Lead 1' fwiw)

I love being able to intuitively dial in sounds on my Lead. All (or most) of the parameters are there in the knobs, right in front of you. I've been reading the manual of the Stage and it seems like some of the knobs of the Lead have been replace by presets (pitch width, for instance?), and in general, maybe having to navigate a digital menu to change certain parameters. I once briefly had a keyboard where the parameters were changed from a digital menu and it was so unintuitive, I just stopped. Keyboards aren't my main instrument, so I want to dial in sounds and move on, as opposed to spending a bunch of time geeking out on it.

So, my question is: For any of you that have transitioned from a Lead to a Stage, has it been a smooth transition, or have you been frustrated trying to dial in your old Lead sounds on the Stage?

[maxpiano]

Hi, on the Stage there is no need for menu diving as well to dial in sounds (apart for a few global parameters which you will set pribably just once), but you have less parameters and layers for the Synth compared to the Leads (2 layers on NS Classic,2,3 and 3 layers on probbly

Besides, each Stage has a Synth section inspired by different other Nord synths, so they are not the same and in general NS Synth is a cut down of its equivalent: NS Classic/EX is based on NL1/2 (with a huge of reduction in parameters), NS2 is based on Nord Wave, NS3 is based on Nord A1 (with added samples support) and NS4 is baed on NW2 (some menu diving for synth parameters is actually present here)

Bottom line, the best thing you can do is to download the manual of the model(s) you are interested in and read it, to discover its capabilities in depth.