Nord Stage 2 Compact Reviews

I bought this as an investment because I was playing at multiple churches a week. Before, my rig consisted of running Ivory II on Mainstage and then some other plugins, using the house keyboard as a controller. Since making the transition to the Stage 2 I can honestly say, I have no regrets. I bought one used on this site and I was not disappointed, it was just like new. Meets every expectation. Sound quality is perfect. Blows my old rig out of the water.

In 30 years of playing keyboards live, I've been searching for one keyboard that can do it all - GIve me realistic acoustic and electric piano, lush strings and pads, wild textures, lead-line sounds that can cut through the noise and killer B-3 with drawbar controls. The Nord Stage 2 is what I have been waiting for. I bought it for the sounds but have discovered how easy it is to program layers, splits and and modify the sound on the fly. I'm no longer the the last man standing at the end of a gig - and I can pack my equipment into a car. I've owned Farfisa, Wurlitzer, Yamaha, Akai, Alesis, Sequential Circuits, Roland, Ensoniq, Elka, Hammond and more. The Nord Stage 2 is light weight and the ability to upload samples keeps it sounding fresh. This is the only one I take now.

Great upgrades. especially the synth section. The envelopes are much more controllable. Great Piano sections, and Awesome Nord Organ emulations.

I've had a Nord Stage Classic & EX, and this new model is miles better. The synth section is very flexible, and the addition of samples in the synth engine has opened up the possibilities of the Stage tremendously. Using the editor, i've been able to drop my own instrument samples, and various one-shots for shows. The B3 engine is remarkable improved, and it kept all the great features of the older Nord Stages/Electros. i prefer the 73 compact for the weight and silky synth/B3 waterfall key action. Like all Nords, it has a few quirky limitations (limited layer splitting & stacking), but it's still my go-to for most gigs for it's immediacy.

Well, had to get this from a competitor as Nord hasn't supplied Sweetwater for a while: Feel of keys, excellent, love the waterfall. Lots of buttons and dials. Kind of bummed with the stock sounds. Have a Kronos and Jupiter and VR 700, compares OK to VR 700, but Kronos and Jupiter blow it out of the park sound wise! That said, it weighs 12 pounds. Yeah, I can pick it up with one hand. Thats worth the price of admission for me...
The organs are really great though, still the lack of a real drawbar still is weird.Wish list: XLR outs, lowest note being at least a 'E' if not a 'C'(It's an 'F';WTF) Bigger display and easier navigation.

I am totally impressed with my NS2 Compact. Last Thursday night and Friday morning I spent 8 hours programming all the keyboard setups for my classic rock band, and discovered that the instrument is very easy to use. I love the quick "hit a button" button approach to setting splits and layers and assigning sounds to them. I learned to save all my newly programmed synth sounds into the synth area of memory so I can recall them easy for use in other keyboard layouts. The Slot A/B function essentially gives you two instruments. I usually need more synth tones than piano and organ, so I found that with a little creativity, you can use the morph feature to make two synth sounds from a single slot. I found the Synth section to be much more flexible and powerful than I expected, due to the unison oscillators (thanks forum members for the great answers to my questions on this). The whole design of that section was really well thought out, as the mod envelope, arpeggiator, and LFO really make any kind of sound possible needed for live playing.

I played my first gig last night, and this keyboard just sounds fantastic with the band. I love the global mono feature, and the fact that you can program the control pedal for overall volume so that my overdrive in the organ section can be the same regardless of volume, unlike my Electro 3. The C2 organ seems to have a little more guts to the sound than the NE3 and the drawbar morph is a fantastic feature.g. This is my third Nord product and they really make a well designed, well constructed product. Even the band remarked how beautiful it looked.
Kudos to Clavia on this board.