Clavia Announces Nord Electro Emulator

April 21, 2000 -- Clavia's goal when developing Nord Electro was to create the best emulations of the traditional electromechanical keyboard instruments on the market, and to make the instrument compact and lightweight. Nothing else. Just outstanding electromechanical keyboard sounds with true feel, from fast keyboard response to authentic sound. To make a great tool you have to put all the focus on a few things, and that's what we did with Nord Electro.

The interface of the Electro is divided into two sections. You will find the tone wheel organ section on your left hand side and the electric piano section on the right.

The organ in Nord Electro is based on a digital implementation of the mechanical tone wheels of the B-3 organ. It offers innovative solutions to mimic the typical B-3 sound, for example:
- A complex digital model of the original chorus and vibrato scanner
- Simulation of the individual random contact bounces for each partial
- Simulation of the unique frequency characteristics of the built-in pre-amplifier which forms the "body" of the B-3 sound

On the right hand side of Nord Electro you will find a selection of electromechanical pianos. Nord Electro features a unique multi-sample playback, catching every nuance from soft to hard hits. Nord Electro comes right out of the box with several legendary electric piano sounds stored in flash memory. Nord Electro also sports a USB interface for quick and easy download of new piano sounds in the future.

Technical specifications

Organ section

Polyphony
Full polyphony (61-note from the internal keyboard and 122 notes with
additional MIDI keyboard)

9 electric drawbars with memory functionality
The drawbars of Nord Electro are represented by buttons and LED bar graphs instead of ordinary mechanical drawbars. This gives you a big advantage: when you change presets, the correct drawbar settings are shown immediately by the LEDs.

Effects
Swell (the characteristic B-3 volume pedal function)
- Percussion (2nd, 3rd, loud, soft, slow, fast)
- Chorus/Vibrato (C1, C2, C3/V1, V2, V3)
- Overdrive
- Rotary Speaker simulation (slow, fast, stop).
- Organ Morph: smooth transformation between two separate organ presets.

User presets
6 user presets in which you can store complete setups, including drawbar positions and effects settings.

Drawbar settings presets
9 drawbar settings presets in ROM and 9 user presets.

Electric piano section

Polyphony
Minimum 24 voices.

User presets
6 user preset memories in which you can store complete setups, including effects settings.

Effects
Overdrive, Equalizer, Chorus, Flanger, Phaser, Tremolo, Wah-Wah, Auto Wah.

Global features

Keyboard Split
Two sections with selectable split point. Organ - organ, piano - organ or organ - piano.

Dual manuals (MIDI Split)
Nord Electro is designed to support an extra MIDI keyboard in addition to its own. This makes it possible to play one sound on the internal keyboard and another on the external MIDI keyboard simultaneously - with instant control of both sounds from the front panel. This way you can easily create your custom 2-manual organ. You could also play a piano sound on the internal keyboard and an organ sound on the external MIDI keyboard, or the other way around.

Keyboard
5-octave velocity sensitive keyboard with Octave Shift functionality separate for the organ and piano sections.

Connections
2 Audio outputs
1 Headphone output
1 Control pedal input
1 Swell pedal input
1 Sustain pedal input
1 Rotary Speaker speed switch pedal input
MIDI In, MIDI Out.
USB interface for fast and easy download of new piano sounds to the internal flash memory.

Accessories
CD-ROM with multi-sampled pianos.

For more information, visit Clavia's web site at www.clavia.se.