JeffLearman Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 OK, I know, I just got an Electro 2. I love the control layout, and the sounds are useful, but I was hoping to replace it with an NE3 in a few years. But, looking at the NE3 controls, I'm thinking maybe I'll pass. Seems to me they made some huge mistakes. Hopefully I'm just not understanding it correctly. With NE2, in organ mode, hold shift with pinky and press drawbuttons to quickly pull up different drawbar settings. Doesn't affect anything else, just like the preset keys on a B3 -- only you get to see the drawbar registrations on the LEDs and tweak them on the fly. Cool, works great. I'll call these drawbar presets. You get 8, which is fine. There are builtins, of which about 2 are useful. There's a random one, which is useless. Does it work the same way for NE3? NE2 also has patches. You use up/down buttons to select a bank and then press a number (1-8) to select a patch. This affects all the front panel controls except master volume. You can have one bank for your go-to sounds, and 7 other banks for patch changes for particular tunes. 64 total patches. Good. It's slow to change between different piano section sample sets, which is understandable and typical of ROMplers. You can't play through sample changes, which some of the better ROMplers allow, but I can live with that. NE3 doesn't have the 8 numbered keys. The shift button is moved way over to the right, so you can't hold it with pinky while selecting a drawbar preset with another finger or thumb, and it looks like many choices would require two hands. Fine for single-keyboard use, because you can't play through a patch change anyway. But bad for dual keyboard use! With NE3, they ditched the built-in presets so we get 17 to choose from rather than 8. They kept the useless random button. And, what does it do? Are these the patches or just drawbar presets? What are the A and B buttons? Can the NE3 do fast changes between different piano section sounds? No big deal if not, but it would be nice to know. (I've yet to find out whether NE2 can do fast changes between organ and piano sections; I suspect yes, and if so, that'll relieve my mind for a couple songs where I switch between the two.) Finally, the Leslie is in the organ section rather than the FX section. I find I like the sound of the epianos through the Leslie. (The overdrive sounds different, but that's fine -- acatually, I prefer the piano section overdrive to the organ section one.) But, there's a "rotary" selection for the amp/speaker emulation section. Is this pretty much the same as the Leslie? If so, fine. It's way cool that for E3 and Stage you can create your own sample sets. I'd love to load my jRhodes soundfont onto the NE3. Too bad there's no converter, to convert the new nsmp format to .cn2 for NE2, but I suspect I know why this is so, and it's a good engineering/marketing/antipiracy reason. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nillerbabs Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 With NE2, in organ mode, hold shift with pinky and press drawbuttons to quickly pull up different drawbar settings. Doesn't affect anything else, just like the preset keys on a B3 -- only you get to see the drawbar registrations on the LEDs and tweak them on the fly. Cool, works great. I'll call these drawbar presets. You get 8, which is fine. There are builtins, of which about 2 are useful. There's a random one, which is useless. Does it work the same way for NE3? Yes and no. There are drawbar presets, but they are all user-editable, there's one for each drawbar button and there's still only 1 button for random, which means you've got 17 fully editable settings to choose from. However, as you say they're triggered by holding down the Shift button, and reaching across the entire piano section isn't comfortable or intuitive at all, so I rarely use the drawbar presets. I hope Nord will release an update allowing the buttons to trigger the drawbar presets by themselves if a MIDI drawbar controller is being used. While we're talking organ, yes, the Rotary option in the Amp section is a leslie speaker simulation - and a damn beautiful one, too (at least for something that's not named Ventilator ) The patch select system of the NE3 is the biggest bummer of the keyboard, closely followed by the omission of the wonderful Delay effect in the Stage. The NE3 has a total of 128 patches (not counting the Live buffer) divided in 64 banks. The two patches per bank are selected with the A and B buttons. This system sucks. Apart from being misleading (the A and B buttons on the Nord Stage are the forte of its multitimbrality), having to scroll up and down in far too many banks, remembering whether the wanted sound is in A or B is a tormenting obstacle when playing. I find it very curious that Nord didn't just reuse the patch selection system of the NE2, which obviously worked great. When in doubt, superimpose pentatonics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tonysounds Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 The patch selection on the Electro 2 was far from great, but it seems like a panacea compared to the Electro 3. In addition to the above, the deletion of a TRUE auto-wah (hold a chord and it goes wah wah wah at a pretermined rate and depth) which was present on the Electro 2 and now is gone from Stage and Electro 3 models, just plain baffles me. Hitting "Play" does NOT constitute live performance. -Me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffLearman Posted October 20, 2009 Author Share Posted October 20, 2009 Thanks for the feedback. Also, the FX with just one parameter knob -- is there a way to control two parameters (e.g., holding shift while twiddling knob)? Otherwise, how does one set the tremolo rate AND depth? Thanks again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nillerbabs Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 There simply is no way of editing the FX depth. There are three levels of pre-determined selectable FX depths for pan, trem, flange, phase and chorus. The levels are fine for the pitch modulation FX, but the highest depth level is absurd for tremolo and pan (trem: the audio simply disappears at the lowest level! pan: When in its extreme, there is only audio in one of the two channels). I have suggested that Nord make a software application that allowed users to edit the FX depths independently for each FX section, but my proposal was dismissed because - oh yea, if they do make it, I'll sue them for money! When in doubt, superimpose pentatonics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nillerbabs Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 In addition to the above, the deletion of a TRUE auto-wah (hold a chord and it goes wah wah wah at a pretermined rate and depth) which was present on the Electro 2 and now is gone from Stage and Electro 3 models, just plain baffles me. Yea! When in doubt, superimpose pentatonics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffLearman Posted October 20, 2009 Author Share Posted October 20, 2009 I have suggested that Nord make a software application that allowed users to edit the FX depths independently for each FX section, but my proposal was dismissed because - oh yea, if they do make it, I'll sue them for money! Solution: post it on a public forum and direct their attention there. That way, it becomes public domain and they can use it without legal ramifications (as long as they don't copy your text, which is implicitly copyrighted). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffLearman Posted October 20, 2009 Author Share Posted October 20, 2009 In addition to the above, the deletion of a TRUE auto-wah (hold a chord and it goes wah wah wah at a pretermined rate and depth) which was present on the Electro 2 and now is gone from Stage and Electro 3 models, just plain baffles me. As it turns out, it DOES have this feature ... ... but ONLY if you don't have an expression pedal connected! (SHEESH!) I suggest they use the rate knob for the rate. If it's cranked all the way up, then use the foot pedal (and some display goes to "FP"). Bingo: problem solved, no hardware required, and yes, a "hidden" feature, which we hate but not as much as we hate simple features that are just plain missing altogether! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
area51recording Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 There simply is no way of editing the FX depth. There are three levels of pre-determined selectable FX depths for pan, trem, flange, phase and chorus. The levels are fine for the pitch modulation FX, but the highest depth level is absurd for tremolo and pan (trem: the audio simply disappears at the lowest level! pan: When in its extreme, there is only audio in one of the two channels). I have suggested that Nord make a software application that allowed users to edit the FX depths independently for each FX section, but my proposal was dismissed because - oh yea, if they do make it, I'll sue them for money! Where exactly do you go to select the 3 levels of fx that are available? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nillerbabs Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Where exactly do you go to select the 3 levels of fx that are available? You simply press the FX select button; i.e. Phas1 is the lowest level, Phas2 is the middle one, and another press will cause both Phas1 and Phas2 to light up, engaging the invisible Phas3, which is the most dramatic setting. When in doubt, superimpose pentatonics. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeffLearman Posted October 20, 2009 Author Share Posted October 20, 2009 Thanks, Nil -- I wondered about that too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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