Kawai Piano Prices: Nord Electro 3, 73-Key Electronic Stage Piano and Organ (AMS-NE373) Review

I sold my Electro 2 so I could partially buy the latest model. After using it a few weeks it's clear how much better it could have been. Here are the good and bad:

Good:
- New sounds including Vox Continental, Farfisa, harpsichords and samples.
- Better Hammond organ sound.
- Better piano sounds but they take up a lot of memory and do not have keyboard resonance features of the Nord Stage EX.
- Sample software allows you to create your own sounds, organize your patches and is easy to use.
- More built-in effects including reverb, compression and 3 different amplifier distortions.
- USB MIDI interface.

Bad:
- Limiting up/down buttons plus A/B patch selector makes it difficult to get to the sounds you want quickly. The Electro 2 had 8 buttons plus bank up/down which is more useable.
- Unergonomic button layout makes navigation difficult. For example, the shift button is too far from the organ presets making it impossible to play and switch presets at the same time.
- Lack of effect amount knobs as on the Electro 2. You are stuck with toggling through only 3 preset amount settings.
- Ring modulation should not be an oscillator like tremelo. The Electro 2 is correct.
- New Vox and Farfisa sounds aren't that accurate.
- Only 64 MB of onboard sample library memory means you'll be limited to how many sounds you can use at a time.
- Sample software is limiting and doesn't allow for more than one sample per key, assigning polyphony, glide (portamento) or other patch functions.
- No pitch wheel. Nord provides many synthesizer samples but, there's no way to control them. The Electro 3 cannot receive pitch bend MIDI commands from another keyboard either.
- No modulation wheel. Why bother having any synthesizer sounds without modulation.
- Same non-weighted keyboard feels junky.
- Expensive.

[DW]

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Product Description:
How do you improve on a classic performance keyboard like the original Electro? You could take it gently, or you just do what Nord did with the Electro 3; push it as far as you can, and then a bit further. The demands from a performing keyboard player haven't really changed all that much, good quality never goes out of style. They just want to offer you some of the best stuff they have, in a affordable and easy-to-use instrument. They hope that you will have as much fun owning and using the Electro 3, as they have had developing it. The Nord Electro 3 is compatible with the new Nord Piano library. It takes full advantage of the Library's multitude of velocity layers, pedal-down samples and extremely high quality samples providing you with an unprecedented expressiveness. Any current or future piano that is available for the Stage family will also automatically be available to the Nord Electro 3.

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