AWkeys

For the majority of my local gigs, I still get away with my Nord Stage 2 EX Compact. Pedal board under my feet, L to R: Ventilator extension pedal, FC-7 expression pedal plugged into Nord expression input and used for organ and volume morphing, sustain pedal. Nord outputs 1 (and 2 if stereo) into Key Largo input 1 that sits on another pedal board either to left or right of keyboard stand depending on stage location/room. Organ section routed mostly to output 3 which then goes into a Holy Grail Nano reverb, Lounsberry Tall & Fat, finally Neo Ventilator (all on the second pedal board). Output of Vent whether mono or stereo to input 2 of KL. I also use a NS3 Compact for gigs where there is more of a set list (Song Mode very useful!) and it is wired in the same way. I augment either NS2 or NS3 rig with a Korg Kronos 2 for when I need the additional fire power, like the Paul McCartney tribute and David Bowie tributes I am involved in. That also gets routed to the Key Largo. Some gigs I play acoustic or electric guitar - output of acoustic works just fine through the KL. For electric guitar I built a small pedal board with a tuner, a multi-effects and a Joyo AC guitar amp pedal. I don't play lead, just rhythm on a few songs here and there so I don't feel like my tone is so important that I need to bring a separate amp. The beautiy is that it too goes right into the Key Largo, so I am in control of my mix and can send just a L/R to FOH. A little trick you can do with the Key Largo if you need more than the 3 inputs is to use the effects loop as a separate input. I've done this when I'm using the Nord into inputs 1 and 2 (organ), Kronos in 3 and guitar in effects loop. I don't use outboard effects for these gigs, so no problem. KL Largo monitor out to usually just one QSC monitor that sits by my side. Lately I've been doing more in-ears, and the little Behringer wired pack I use takes two inputs, so I take a feed from the KL monitor out and another from FOH. Yeah, it's keys on one side and FOH mix on the other, so not the greatest but works in a pinch. If I trust the FOH, I'll just get a stereo feed directly from them.

This is great! Thanks for sharing, everyone!

I don't get this deep into equipment repair, but I appreciate you guys sharing it - very interesting reading! Really wish I had the knowledge you guys have, but thankfully I know a bunch of techs who are willing to do the work. My ARP Pro-Soloist has recently been restored to full functionality - what an awesome synth! Just yesterday I dropped off my old String Ensemble to a tech friend to get the power supply rebuilt. Also seems like one of the 3 delay lines to the ensemble effect stopped working. Next, I have a headcase of a white-face Odyssey that a previous tech could not bring back to life. I had brought it to him years ago and he just followed problems around the circuit board. To complicate matters, I also purchased an aftertouch kit from the now-defunct New England Analog which was installed, but I can't verify that it will ever work because of the state of this Odyssey. Ugh, old synthesizers....

Awesome, thanks for sharing!

This was my solution for my very small second bedroom (link below). I bought two sets of wall stands and three sets of tier arms for each. Here's one stack of three with a K&M Omega stand holding up the ARP String Ensemble (which is there to demo against the Behringer String Solina I just got yesterday - so far so good!). Also bought a couple of Standtastic trays hold the shorter keyboards. I will take these stands to wherever I live - they are an excellent solution! https://lm-products.myshopify.com/collections/standtastic-keyboard-stands

Yeah, I have an original Signature Edition and the aftertouch is barely usable. I sent it back to Moog about 4-5 years ago when they offered all the mods including slew-rate, but the aftertouch is still crap.

If I read the staff right, I hear it as an F#7#9/C#, ie. an F#7#9 in second inversion

I have a pedalboard that serves two purposes: it holds my Radial Key Largo mixer and a power strip, and the three pedals below it are for organ. I primarily gig with a Nord Stage, and it is configured (most of the time) for organ to go out of output 3. This goes into an EH Holy Grail Nano reverb pedal then into a Lounsberry Tall & Fat then finally into a Neo Ventilator 2. Outputs of the Ventilator either mono or stereo to input 2 on the Key Largo. I also have a smaller pedal board under my feet that holds (L to R) a remote for the Ventilator (stop/slow/fast), an expression pedal and a sustain pedal. Never considered whether the reverb should go before or after the Tall & Fat. Wouldn't the reverb on an A-100 go before the preamp?

Check out this oddity - Tom Scholz' Franken-Hammond. Two full-sized, staggered keybeds, the wheel on the upper-left cheek block I'm assuming affects the tone generator speed as it's his pitch-bend wheel. No doubt there are a bunch of you who can tell me if that's the case. I know he did the pitch-bends on the the first album by slowing the tape machine while he was tracking. Anyway, this thing looks like a giant headache!

Me three on the keybed. First thing I noticed. The synth is built so well, and the keybed feels chintzy in comparison.

It's all a money-laundering scheme by Big Plastic.

It's such a ridiculously wonderful synth. Maybe a bit of a sleeper in our world of analog goodness, but IMO it's already legendary. I have barely scraped the edges of mine.

I own a Blue Marvin B2600, a BOdyssey, a PolyD. I also own an original 1973 ARP Odyssey that is pretty much broken, was on line to get the original Korg reissue 2600 (too far back in line to get one), owned the Korg Mini-Odyssey, own a Signature Edition Moog Voyager that I bought in 2001. I don't blame anyone for their feelings about Behringer's business practices. Those stories are egregious. The fact remains that their price point makes it possible for me to own things that would have put me out thousands more dollars. As a full-time musician, I have to consider this. My take (or cop-out, if you believe it to be so) is that every piece of technology I own has some dark history in its development behind it. The history of my country is much darker than the white-washing it was given. Maybe it makes me part of the problem that I don't fight these things, but I'm just trying to be creative in what is at many times a very dark world.

Yeah, I believe I was just using a Wurli sound through the wah effect on my Nord Stage 2 when I played it with Joe Vitale. As he said, they were still building Caribou Ranch when they were up there recording that record, so who knows what keyboards they had available at the time. The Odyssey was new, portable and de rigueur of the time. I quickly tried to dial in the ARP Odyssey sound on the Stage last night during sound-check and it's so close, though the ARP is way better (of course, it's analog!) Anyway, what sounds like PWM is actually just two analog sawtooth wave oscillators beating against each other.

I got it dialed in on my BARP Odyssey. Wanted to post a video, but my damn Yamaha expression pedal is so loud, I need to record audio separate from video. However, it is definitely just an ARP Odyssey. Two sawtooth oscillators with an expression pedal controlling the filter. The ADSR is also opening the filter a tad. I'll try to record it and put a link to the video here over the weekend.

I actually got to sing and play that with Joe Vitale, the original drummer/keyboardist on the song. I can confirm that he used an ARP Odyssey for that section. Told me that he and Joe were up at Caribou Ranch working on it while the studio was being built. They've been best friends since they started out together in Ohio.

You're welcome!

Absolutely, the sequencer transmits over MIDI. I have both the Poly D and the B2600 and love playing them together - though I'm more a fan of the arpeggiator than of the sequencer, in all honesty.

My synth journey from "skinny" to "bloated" started with a Yamaha Portasound, forgot the model. Bought it at a local catalog store called Arthur's with my paper-route money. Then bought Yamaha's response to the Casio SK-1 and made lots of prank phone calls with it! My first "real" synth was a used DX-27 which I spent a lot of time learning to program. All the time I was lusting after analog goodness. This was the era of the M1, and people were letting their mono and poly synths as well as electromechanical keyboards go for next to nothing. I had about next to nothing and I spent my money wisely. Got a Micromoog for $25 and a PolySix for $75. Man was I in heaven! Got a Hammond C-3 /Leslie 122 with bench, pedals and Roll-or-Kari's for $400. My first Wurlitzer for $60, my first Rhodes for $300. Those were the days! Now I have a museum of vintage gear but gig out mostly with a Nord Stage Compact. I complement it with a Kronos when needed - to this day possibly the best workstation I've ever known - or just a weighted controller if no extra sounds are called for. I'm gonna have to say the Nord Stage has been the ultimate game-changer for me just in terms of sheer mileage and the way I've melded with it. I'm still surprised at what I get out of my Stage 2 - and people still come up to me and can't believe the sounds I coax from it.

Hello Stephen, Thanks so much for your detailed review! As a long time Nord guy myself (since the Electro 2 and through every Stage iteration), I am looking forward to you getting into the program and MIDI management (ie, the center section) of the S4. I still have two NS2's that are my main giggers and the NS3 for special gigs where there is always a setlist. Why? First, they removed "pending load" in the redesign from the 2 to the 3, and that is one of the most useful ways to get around the programs in the Nord, especially when you are on a gig and people are calling off songs. I know I could manage this function from an iPad hooked up to the Nord and Gig Performer or whatever app, but that's just a PITA to have to think about all the time, especially for the many gigs where I don't need to bring an iPad. Another curious and major issue thing I came upon with the NS3, below. Someone posted about this in the "List of Nord Stage 3 known issues/bugs" thread: "Found a couple of big MIDI problems and omissions from NS3: * Sending Program Change via MIDI is now only possible through the Global Channel, whereas on the NS2 this could be done via the Slot/Panel. If using the NS3 with an external board eg. Korg Kronos, they must be set to the same MIDI channel, which massively limits the MIDI capabilities" In my experience this meant I had to execute program changes directly from the NS3 in "Song" mode and not from the much, much better Setlist mode in my Kronos. Really hoping Nord fixed this in the new Stage 4.

Yep, I bought two of those Knox stands - they're fantastic! Gonna have to check out that Liquid Z stand, Iconoclast.

Apparently there are other people who have experienced problems with the USB chip on the NS 2. I did a quick Google and pulled up this: "There is a SMD circuit named ISP1181bdgg which controls the USB functions, and I think the problem is there. I checked the USB socket and it is perfect, as well the fuses behind it too. But seems this SMD chip isn't, but it's just what my tecnician suppose to. I don't know where can I find theses chip on internet, anyone???..." Maybe you already know this? If you could source that part number and have a tech install it, that could be your solution. Good luck!

I've had one of these in my gig toolbox for years, works great! Yamaha MG06X 6-channel Mixer with Effects. https://www.sweetwater.com/c264--Analog?highlight=MG06X&utm_source=google&utm_medium=organicpla

I think my previous two stories weren't really about me screwing up, and I've had plenty: 1. Playing in front of thousands of people, starting a song with the wrong patch dialed up and being called out on it. 2. Driving to a corporate event 3 hours away and turning around halfway because I forgot my suit. 3. Another corporate event and I forgot my suit. Went to K-Mart down the street and spent about $40 on a pair of black jeans, a button down shirt, vest and tie. Get complimented on how I look, LOL! 4. Leaving my brand-new iPad on top of my car in a bad area of town for about an hour before I realize I forgot to bring it inside. Luckily it was still out there. There's probably 100 more of those...

Another great, but long story. Total clusterf***! Had a couple dates at a resort in Cancun about 10 years ago. These were outdoor shows at a resort that was specifically reserved that weekend for our leader's fan club. First night: at sound check, for some reason I cannot hear the low mids coming from my stereo monitors and keep going over to the monitor guy requesting more mids. Other than that, we get done and go eat. They have to cover our gear as there are thundershowers in the area. Show starts and some stagehand forgets to uncover the bass rig, so the bassist is scrambling as we begin the first song. A couple songs later, the 2nd guitarist screws up an intro or something - it was his first gig with this lineup, but he gets some stink-eye. Then another song or two later, the lead guitarist/MD of the band, his guitar amp dies. Roadies replace it with another one, DOA. Another one, DOA. Takes about 5 minutes to fix the problem, and the band is feeling tense. We get going again. Next thing that happens, bass player starts a song in the wrong key - this is a guy who NEVER screws up. I think we actually restarted that song. Next up is me. Three white-keys in a row on my backlined 88-key controller all break in the middle of a song and I'm scrambling to get through it. What our employer doesn't know is that I saved my own ass and shipped down a backup controller. (76 semi-weighted keys, so not as desirable otherwise I would have used it first.) Takes 2 minutes for me and a roadie to swap it out. Then, the piece-de-resistance: the very next song we start and there's a huge BOOM over and over. The singer is yelling at me and the percussionist "WTF!" and we're shrugging as we don't know what the hell it is. Turns out they were using clip mics on the rack toms and one fell off onto the floor tom, so when the drummer hit the floor tom this mic would bounce up and down! OMG, I'm laughing out loud at this memory now! Somehow we finish the night and go to our rooms with our tails between our legs. Second night: As keys and drums are always the first required to show for sound check and given that Murphy's Law shit all over us the previous night, I decide to show up to sound check hours early. I get there and we come to find out that the gear rental company not only covered the FOH board with plastic and left the damn thing on overnight - a plume of steam rose when they took the plastic off - they zeroed out the faders! So we have to start over from scratch. Meanwhile, the FOH engineer is working on the drum riser next to my keyboard riser while the monitor guy is dialing me in. He notices something wrong and asks me to hold out a piano chord. Turns out my monitors were wired out of phase - thus my problem with the low mids from the previous day. I felt vindicated about that. Eventually the rest of the band shows up and we start sound-checking. Everything is going well then POOF! No sound. Guess what? The monitor board blew!! We get escorted to the tent behind the stage where we sit for a few hours while they try to figure out how we are going to do a show. The nearest replacement mixing board is about 3 hours away. By the time it would arrive and get patched in we'd be into our first set, so that's a no go. Finally the stage manager peaks his head into the tent and says "remember the days of playing a bar gig and you could barely hear yourself? That's what you're going to do tonight!" They realized that they had a couple of extra buses on the FOH board so that they could send our leader his own mix as he always gets and the rest of the band would have to share the other mix. Luckily, I thought to ask about the state of those backup guitar amps. They were all double-checked and working, and there were plenty of them so I requested one to run my aux out into as my keyboard monitor, and couple of the other non-guitar instrumentalists did the same for themselves. The end result is that we put on a killer show and totally redeemed ourselves. I think I kissed the ground when I got back home.