Clavia Nord Lead 2

The Nord is how shall we say..... way cooolll.. When I took it out of the box after being blown away at the demo room, as it was pitched against the JP8000 (Roland), and the Korg, Yamaha etc.. I was greeted by the beautiful rich sounds of the NORD. Not that I needed them but I tried them anyway and found that the presets offered a brilliant base to work from for just about any music that you want to get your teeth into. The really cool thing about editing the patches on the NORD is that you can do it with your eyes closed.. Literally.. NOBS!!!!! really easy to use KNOBS... Brilliant.. Takes me back to my SH101 days but with polyphony too and a memory. The manual, now that I have actually started reading it. I thought I maight just to see if i missed anything. It was easy to read. brought to my attention very quickly that I really didn't have to read it, but I did anyway. Bliss shear bliss.

The polyphony is great, more than I have fingers anyway so thats cool.. I will maybe develop a need for more than the 16 that is has but not for a while. I have my JV1080 for the complex stuff... This is a lead maabnn.. The keyboard is fast and light.. what you need for good techno, Maybe could have been finished in marble or something ;^) just kidding. I love the hand crafted bendy bar and the Aluminium expression roller, the metal casing.. This is definately one work of art keyboard. Expansion??? well I would like to store my sound on the PC and call them back when neccesary, maybe you can do that haven't even tried to tell you the truth.. Everything is midifiable..... everything. even aftertouch.. but it doesn't have after touch on board maybe a bit of an oversight.. So who needs a sequencer when youve got two hands and arpeggiator and a PC.

everything sounds great.. This instrument is very real... none of the plastic crap casing that you have on other supposed real instruments of the nineties.. So easy to use.. Easy peasy.. And I have to say that it seems to work great for just about any type of music except classical.. I found that I got nothing out of it when I tried to draw a bow across the strings.... :) Who needs effects when you've got analogue?? or as close as you can get to analog in the last 10 years.. It really reacts to your presence... None of the laser control that the MC505 apparently has.. I like to play my keyboards not wave at them..

I think at this stage that I could depend heavily on this.. I could probably use it to hammer nails too...

haven't had too.. I am glad that I bought it here in Australia tho... sounds like I got a bargain..

Definately worth what I paid for it.. And if it were stolen I would definately buy it again.. I'm an addict. I have been playing since 1986... I own and have owned: Roland SH101, yamaha dx100, korg Poly800, Roland JX8P, Roland JV1080, Yamaha sy22. I love the color RED.... I love the sound HOT.... I love the feel COOL.... I compared this side by side with the Yamaha cs1, A1X, Kork Z1, roland JP8000. This was the only one that didn't sound like plastic or digital... I wish the NORD came with a kilo of speed, or caffeine or something cause your not gonna wanna sleep..

presets are nice. Editing is so damn easy, you wont need a patch editor. The Manual is very helpfull this thing is so choke full of stuff you need to read it.

16 voices of polyphony, 4 part multitimberal. no built in effects, but you can get delay and chorus with the 2 LFOs available. it has one PCMCIA slot for storing performance settings. The midi implementaion it great on this thing. Everyknob and button send midi controller information, so every movment and adjustment made to a patch are recorded by your sequencer. it also has an arppegiator, which you can use to create the echo/delay effect with. It doesnt send aftertouch, but does recieve aftertouch.

This thing sounds freaking great. I love making patches with this thing. Its great if your into sound design. It sounds very analoge, listening to it you would think it was analoge. The purists might get rediculous about it though. but you really can't tell the difference. with most virutual analoge synths these days you can hear the "digital" sound when turning the filter knobs, but with this its soooooooo smooth, you cant. The filters are nice and wide and sound beautiful. you can really make this thing scream if you want. The Velocity on the synth can be assigned to any paremeter, frequency, resonance, envelope, attack, etc..... an you can assign as many paremeters to velocity at once as you like for some really cool sounds. Also is the Morph function thats optionally assigned to the mod wheel. When in Morph mode you can again assign any paremeter on the board freq, Res, Env, etc..... to the mod wheel, and you can assign how much of each paremeter you would like. All LFO's sync to midi time clock and the arppegiator also syncs to midi time clock. This synth will work great for any type of music your doing. Its all around excellent. Again there are no onboard effects, but you can get chorus out of the LFO1 if you set it correctly, and there is an echo option on LFO2. which remeber syncs to midi time clock. It also has sysex dump buttons, one for an individual patch, and one for all patches. so if you changed something on a patch that you don't want to store. you can just hit record on your sequencer and dump the patch in sysex to the begining of your track, because it also receives sysex.

this thing is real tough. Very road worthy. The entire body is metal.

haven't needed to call them so I don't know

I am defenitly gonna buy another one. I want to of these, I love everything about this synth, its a prodigy. I compared it to all of the other virtual analoge synths out there like the Cs1x, an1x, Korg Z1, and none of them come close to the sounds of this thing, especially in the filters, there is a huge difference in the filters. The Nord Lead 2's filters are perfectly smooth, while in the others you can hear those "digital" adjustments being made. The Nord Lead 2 is the way to go. Especially considering its 4 part multitimberal, which the An1x and the Cs1x are not. This thing blows them away.

Extremely easy. It has knobs and switches as old analog synthesizer, and well organized front panel. Even layer setting or some MIDI set-up is easy. Missing LCD is sometime sad, you can't name your sound, only numbers. But, for me, it's not so big deal.

It has 16 polyphony and 4 multi timbal, 4 separate out-put. Big polyphony is nice for layered fat and/or complex sound. Also nice for MIDI recording. Indipendent out-put is also nice when you'd like to apply different effect for each sound. No build-in effector is bit sad. sometime I need it for less important part, but apply different effect setting. Clavia's unique pitch bender is very useful, and moduration wheel is also cool. But about keyboard, sometime I'd like to have 5 oct one rather than 4oct. And It's keyboad doesn't support after tougch... bit sad. Other strange thing is user memory area. Only you can store 40 setting to the Nord Lead 2... excuse me, it isn't late 70th or eary 80th... Also, you can't store your layer setting or multi-timbal setting to internal memory....hmm The Nord Lead 2 has PCMCIA card slot, and if you feed it, you would have bunch of memory area and also you can store your performance, too, of cource! But it's less convinient. About "Feature" perspective, it's not so bad, but not excellent In my opinion.

I love it's sound very much. I still think the Nord Lead 2 is best sound synthesizer in the market at this moment. Also, Compair to original Nord Lead, I think Filter setting is getting better for my ears. Douns are very analog like and most of time, you can use Analog synthesis trick. I recommend it for variety of keyboad player who loves analog sound, not only club music.

I haven't spend enough time to say.

I've never ask.

I said for "Feature" prespective, I said little bad about the Nord Lead 2, on the other hand, sound is really excellent. If you'd like to have "Musical Instrument" rather than computer, the answer is no problem, I think. I'd like to say if you're interested in analog synthesizing in this time, this is the keyboad for you. Some people said this is not truely analog sound, may be it's true. But, I'd like to enjoy "analog" sound without nasty maintenance issue, and some MIDI imprementation problem. Addition, I think Nord Lead 2 has still most attractive looking than other "virtual" type synthesizer.