From eslawson@juno.com Sat Dec 01 00:23:40 2001
Subject:Using real drawbars with Nord Electro & praise for Nord Lead 1

Electro question:

I may have posted this question a long time ago but since the Electro was
so new I do not believe I had any answers.

I am intrigued by the Nord Electro and I am curious if the Voce V5
drawbars could be connected to it via MIDI to control the Electro drawbar
settings.

Does anyone have any input or real life experiences with this scenario?
Thanks

Praise for Nord Lead 1:

Going OT a little bit... I have been on the VA quest this year after
getting tired of lugging my vintage Roland synths around. My basic rig
is an RD600, XK2 and V5 going into a KBRm. On occasion I bring a 3rd
keyboard which was a Jupiter 8 until I sold it to finance my Leslie 122,
or a JX-8P or Juno 106. This would usually create problems because I
would need another keyboard stand and would take up a lot of space on
stage with the "L" setup to support 3 keyboards.

So I have been "test driving" a couple of VAs this year. I had a Waldorf
MicroQ and Novation A-station very briefly. Neither one pleased me.
Just the other day, I impulsively jumped on an eBay steal for an unused
Nord Lead 1 in a case. I have never, ever, laid eyes on a Nord synth,
let alone played one. There are no Nord dealers in proximity to me. So
it was a leap of faith. I received the Nord the other day and I am
infatuated with it. Sure, it has some shortcomings, but it really solves
my problem and I think I can be happy with it for a long time. I have it
velcroed on the upper ledge of my XK2 so I don't need to do the "L"
keyboard setup. It is very slim and lightweight, yet it is all steel and
very ruggedly built. I like the sound as well. I used it on a gig for
the first time tonight, mainly tweaking presets, and I had grins coming
from all around the stage. Everything from fat mono Moogish leads to
string pads, sound FX, etc. It really made my gig a lot of fun. The
best part of it was this... I was so carried away with the VA
possibilities that I almost forgot that I had a killer Hammond and piano
sitting there as well. It was so cool to have a separate keyboard for
each instrument. In my opinion, that is the best user interface.
Before, I was trying to drive a VA rack from either the RD or XK, but it
would get complicated when I wanted to turn off the VA and switch to the
Hammond sound. Now I have a dedicated set of keys for each part of my
bag of tricks.

If the Electro has the same quality as the Lead, I think I want to try
it!

Regards,
Eric

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