Nord Electro 5D 61 Reviews

I've had the 5D now for 1 year, and it's delivered everything I was wanting and more. I perform weekly as a solo act, 50s-60s Rock & Soul, with a full stage band sound consisting of my own backing tracks with live vocal + keyboards. The 5D has all the right sounds for this musical genre, not limited to all the famous organ/e-piano sounds, but excellent brass section (trumpets & sax), acoustic standup bass, Fender bass.

This is a sampling synth, and so the preset sounds are taken from real instruments in a lab....very pleasing to the ear.

The 5D offers incredibly fast action, so you can riff up-tempo with no key inertia (Fatar makes the keyboard). I very much like the ease-of-performance design....a master rotator knob accesses the next song in your setlist, and a button press advances to change voices within the song. You can backup the 100s of hours you have invested in your 5D setups and playlist to a computer file via USB.

As a sampling synth, it allows you to load your own custom sound effects and backing track segments from .wav files, and then trigger them with a keyboard key-press.

This turned out to be a great choice for my first pro synth, to serve as my "band in a box" live act celebrating music of the great keyboardists of the early rock era.

I use this keyboard in so many ways it is my go to keyboard for strings / horns arrangements for piano's and organ of course the draw bars are a major plus for me to change tones on the fly. You are able to split and layer that is important to my stage performance. It is a fat cutting edge sounding keyboard it covers a lot of ground. The Leslie simulation is flawless the best out there especially if you tweet it internally and through EQ - ing properly you can't tell the difference if you have a model 3300 or a 122 or a 147 Leslie up on stage. The weight of the keyboard is great you are not lifting a boat anchor 13 pounds. The keyboard bed is quick not spongy it has great response. The price is within reach. I had a Electro 4D but this keyboard has so many up grades it was a no brainer to purchase this excellent keyboard bottom line you can't go wrong!!!!!

I've been a fan of vintage keyboards most of my life, so, since it came out, the Nord Electro has been one of my main instruments. I got the Electro 1, upgraded to the E2, then got an E3, then an E4. Without a doubt, the Electro 5 is the most impressive yet. The Electro 4 is still great, so I'm holding on the E4 73 to go with my new E5 61. The Electro 5 sounds great - it doesn't sound exactly like the E4 - the EQ section in particular has its own sound and it sounds incredible. The Leslie sim also seems to have been beefed up some - a very subtle difference, but nice - I usually use a Vent, but I played a rehearsal with the sim and it sounded very good! It has drawbars now (well, drawbar tips on sliders), and they feel exactly right - with satisfying clicks every time you move one. It has a display so you always know what piano model or sample or drawbar setting you have active. It has a huge amount of memory, so you can fit in a few of Clavia's incredible sounding X-Large pianos along with all the electric pianos and still have room for Clavinet, harpsichords, some more acoustic pianos, and more samples than you could ever use. You can layer a couple of these sounds or split the keyboard between 2 of them. You can now play the Hammond bass pedals with your left hand which is cool. If you like to bring one keyboard to a job, this should be it - and the 61 is remarkably small. It's great. It's still Red!

I've been playing keyboards and piano for 25 years (I'm only 30).

I've owned or used Korg M1, Alesis QS7, Motif 8, ES, SX, Montage, Roland Fantom X6, G8, AKAI MPK, M-Audio, Novation, and several others I can't remember at the moment, so my experience with keyboards is extensive.

I picked up the 5D after returning my Yamaha Montage 8 because it was hurting my back lugging it around all the time. I was going to get the 6, but decided to try out the Nord.

Although I was disappointed by the limited number of sampled sounds, I was excited about the great organs and keyboard options. Unlike what one reviewer stated, it's very easy to access different organs. Saving presets makes it all that much more quick. Never have I heard a keyboard with accurate and beautiful B3s, Pipe, Vox, and Farfisa organs that could be customized--with physical drawbars--at this price. Aside from that, the leslie simulator is beautiful. A friend of mine who is in his 40s and prefers the analog and tape sound of the 70s told me that this was the best organ he had every heard on a modern keyboard.

The pianos are another great feature. Nord lets you download different pianos from their website for free. You can choose different sized samples to either have a few highly detailed patches or several medium patches. I love the Fazioli, Royal Grand, Upright Grand and Mellow Grand pianos in the studio and live. But these sounds --- IMHO -- sound better live. They are not as detailed as Roland or Yamaha samples, but you don't want that live unless you're playing alone on high-quality speakers. They cut through the band in a pleasant way.

The sample section is fun to use because you can use the many nord samples from their site, or easily create your own with Nord's sample software. But it gets really fun when start tweaking the sounds in the fx section.

The thing I don't like about it is its relatively high learning curve on certain functions like creating a set list or MIDI configuration. Warning! This is not a great MIDI keyboard. While you can certainly use it for playing sampled instruments on your computer, it doesn't have a pitch bend or mod wheel and you can't change MIDI octaves. It's also hard to map the knobs to your plugins. But this is more of a live keyboard.

The keys are semi weighted waterfall keys. They're a good compromise for organ and piano playing. But they can be a bit noisy compared to weighted keys.

I would definitely recommend this to anyone needing a highly portable keyboard with great sounds.

I use the Nord Electro as the upper manual with a Hammond XK3c. I had been using the Electro2 for years and the Electro 5 had enough upgrades to make the switch. I like the small size and portability of the 5D.
It has been a long while since moving a Hammond B3 around and I sold it ten years ago. The Hammond sounds and the electric pianos are what I use the most and I like the action for those functions. The splits, layers and song sets are a big plus and I like that all the edits and effects are all right there without doing any menu diving. For acoustic piano I still prefer a hammer action board and I play through a Roland RD64 that has a small footprint and doesn't hit the cymbal stand on a small stage. If I had to do a gig with only one board, the electro 5 is the one I would choose.

Bought one of these and will be sending it back. Am used to my Nord Electro 3 where you can simply select organ, piano, or sample and get right thete. You cannot do that with this thing as it seems to only work off the presets. If you just want to play organ it won"t let you. Very difficult to use and not at all intuitive like the Electro 3 which thankfully I still have.
The pianos on the 5d are not that great and you can get better elsewhere. The organs are excellent but difficult to get to. It gas all these split sounds programmed and if you do not like them you are out of luck. Very disappointed. Still have my Nord C and Electro 3. The 5d is not worth the upgrade in my opinion.

This is the first "Pro" keyboard I've purchased in 18 years, and holy crap if I wasn't extremely disapointed. I've been playing a "run of the mill" Yamaha MX49 for the last few years, and all I can say is the key bed of the Nord blows the Yamaha away, but the samples are NOT EVEN CLOSE. The samples of my antiquated Alesis Quadrasynth from the 90's blow this thing out of the water. Apparently the ownership of this red keyboard are vogue, to say the least. Completely unimpressed...

I was really looking forward to the Electro. HOwever, Keybed was small, action was a bit odd and the key finish was too glossy. Dials and buttons are a bit small and intricate. Organ tones are great but many other patches are a bit thin. Prefer Roland. Interface is time consuming. Board is solidly built. Very portable.
Sweetwater staff is exceptional!