From eslawson@comcast.net Sat Nov 16 22:19:29 2002
Subject:Nord Electro 73 - Early experiences

I took the plunge and purchased a Nord Electro 73 v2.0 a few weeks ago from
BT Productions. MANY, MANY thanks to Tony LeBrasca at BT Productions for
his excellent service and support. The first Electro I received was damaged
during shipping and the front rail was bent. It was playable, but two
octaves of the keyboard clanked against the chassis because of the bent
rail.

Tony had me a new in a few days. This one was better, but had some loose
rivet fragments inside the case. This was traced to a small assembly line
error in not following procedure, I believe. This Electro was more usable
but still had some issues. Again, Tony was most accommodating and my third
Electro showed up a few days later. This one is perfect. No shipping
problems or other issues.

I have played a total of 6 gigs on the Electro 73 and I am digging it more
and more each time. It really solves a number of problems for me. I am
going to bullet point the positives and negatives below, based on two weeks
of gig experience with the Electro.

POSITIVE

- Size and weight. This thing is ultra portable. 20 pounds and very
compact for a 73 note keyboard.

- Keyboard action. The best organ action I have played in a clone. I was
always a huge fan of the Hammond XK-2 keyboard and the Electro's is even
more robust feeling. I loved the Korg CX-3 sound, but was never a fan of
its feather-weight keyboard action. The Nord solves this problem in a
jiffy.

- Organ sound. As many have said before, the organ sound is top notch. The
basic drawbar sound with no FX is solid and meaty, ala Voce V5 territory.
After you add internal rotary and C3 chorus, it is unstoppable. It really
makes me feel like I am playing a vintage Hammond when I enable the C3 along
with a bit of distortion. The Leslie sim is also very realistic out of the
box.

- Other sounds. I'm mainly using the organ but dig the other sounds as
well. The Wurly is nearly perfect. I love this sound. The Rhodes sounds
kick as well. The clav requires tweaking and I'm still not sure the
filtering knobs really deliver a realistic Hohner sound. It is a good sound
but just needs to be tailored to one's taste. Using the expression pedal as
a wah wah is really cool. I can get really funky with this sound and the
pedal.

- FX. There are so many things one can do to mangle the Electro sounds and
make them sound crazy. I love using the phaser with a grinding organ sound.
It makes my solos really unique.

NOT SO POSITIVE

- Drawbuttons and overall user interface. I am still not that comfortable
with the buttons and LEDs in place of actual drawbars. Clavia should
provide an add-on drawbar control. In the past, I kept to one organ sound
and just changed the drawbars. With the Electro, I am actually forced to
use presets to make dramatic drawbar changes, since I am not that friendly
with majorly tweaking the LED drawbuttons. For example, I have songs that
toggle between 808000006 and 888765447. With real drawbars, I can find this
quickly. With the Nord buttons, it is challenging to switch back and forth.
I can get past this by using the lower manual settings with my other
controller, but I would really like to see some real hardware drawbars.
Also, I would prefer to have all the controls over on the left side of the
panel, rather than in the middle. I love the Nord Lead synths that have
everything there on the far left. Some of the Electro knobs and buttons are
so far over on the right that it is hard to use my left hand to change them.

- Lack of tweaks for Leslie parameters. The Electro Leslie sounds great,
but I would like to be able to tweak the ramp times of the Leslie. Ramp up
is fine, but ramp down is too quick, especially the bass rotor.

- Lack of velocity curves. The EP and clav sounds are very responsive to an
external controller, but not as responsive to the Electro keyboard. I am
using mine with an RD600 MIDI'd to it and get a very wide dynamic response
when triggering the Electro sounds from the RD600 keys vs. the Electro's. I
cannot get as much response from the Electro.

- Two digit LED is limited. Let's see a display that shows preset names and
edit parameters.

That's all for now. Time to go to bed.

Regards,
Eric Lawson
CloneWheel Support Group Moderator
eslawson@comcast.net

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