Nord User Forum

I find the threads regarding 'MOXF8' in comparison with equivalent Nord models and others interesting and informative as I am researching to determine if I can consolidate several obsolete keyboards into one or two that would take their place and satisfy. The main problem that I have with my old Rodgers W-50 (has a collection of sampled pipe organ voices) and my two Kawai K-3's is their limited polyphony. Of course there is also no rhythm function, either, nor a good piano. So i think it is high time to upgrade. Also due to health problems I'm now completely retired and have time and funds to put into this.

What piqued my interest was happening upon a u-tube of someone having so much fun with a Tyros 5. Why not me? A little research led me to the two "K" brands as well as Nord. Comparing all these is difficult since the only brand carried by a local retailer is Yamaha and they only stock lower priced units.

Right now I'd go for a Nord (or whatever brand) in a New York minute if they had an ample and expandable selection of pipe organ stops available. The ultimate would be to be able to import and play Hauptwerk organs, say from flash cards. Apparently there are so few of us organists that are more interested in pipe organs than combo organs that there isn't much incentive to provide extensive pipe organ voicing for us as they have done with the Hammond, Farfisa, etc. sounds -- unless I've overlooked something. At this point it looks like my only option is two or three inexpensive controller keyboards stacked up in some fashion and a dedicated PC Hauptwerk. Would be nice to avoid the complication ofhooking up, booting up, dongles and all the rest.

I don't know enough about pipe organs to really address quality/feature differences, but Nord does have pipe organ built into their C2D organ, and Hammond has it in the SK1, SK2, and XK1c. They both use the drawbars to allow you to alter/control the sound.

Just something to keep in mind and avoid future disappointment: the organ emulator section in the NS2 has full polyphony, but does not have pipe organ emulation (it has BX2, Vox and Farfisa only).
You can load an organ sample to the synth section, but polyphony is limited to 18 voices.

Mr_-G- wrote:Just something to keep in mind and avoid future disappointment: the organ emulator section in the NS2 has full polyphony, but does not have pipe organ emulation (it has BX2, Vox and Farfisa only).
You can load an organ sample to the synth section, but polyphony is limited to 18 voices.

I don't think polyphony would be an issue for a pipe organ sample loaded into the synth section. Unless you lay your arm across the keys, you can't play more than 10 notes anyway. Now if you're generating each note from multiple component parts (like the stops on a real pipe organ, or the individual drawbar tones), that's different, but the sample section of the Nord doesn't permit that.

With some effort, he could sample some of his favorite Hauptwerk sounds into an Electro, Stage 2, or MOXF (with flash card), but the C2D or Hammonds I mentioned would actually give him drawbar control of the stops, if he likes the pipe organ sounds of those instruments.

In terms of the sampling route, the MOXF would provide more versatility. You could have up to a gigabyte of samples, and you can layer them in such a way as you could theoretically duplicate controls of different stops. Layering of the different tones would eat up polyphony, but since the MOXF has 128 tone polyphony, it shouldn't be an issue. But it would take a good amount of expertise to put it together.

True, although some people have more than 10 fingers - not sure how many play organ though but more seriously if you want to emulate pedals or add some strings in slot B, that reduces polyphony to 9 notes per slot when playing A+B (not sure if voices are dynamically allocated across slots while using MIDI, anyone?). Still 9 is plenty, but not knowing this (the original post complained about polyphony...) could end up being an expensive disappointment.

Hello

My two cents as an organist the uses the C2 (same pipe organ as C2D). Given your criteria of needing to have ample stops (nord organ only has 8 swell, 8 great, 3 pedal) and being expandable without extra equipment (like running Hawptwerk via MIDI from a computer) I cannot recommend the Nord option. I personally think it is still the best option overall for someone like myself since it is the only 30 lb keyboard to my knowledge available that has provides that many stops + traditional performance features like couplers and the ability to change registrations using general piston type MIDI settings. Also very easy to integrate a pedalboard. Plus the killer B3 and euro type organs. Let me know if you have additional questions, I have tried the trial versions of hawptwerk with the nord and my have some insight if you are still considering it as an option.

Cheers,
micah