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Quality and simplicity, not versatiliy is the order of the day

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The last 20 years have seen some pretty staggering evolutionary spurts in the keyboard section of your local music shop: The Roland D50, the Yamaha DX7, the Korg M1, MIDI and perhaps most notably the sampler.

If you're the type of synthusiast that couldn't wait to play these instruments every weekend in the utterly transparent guise of 'seriously thinking of buying it', then you were, and probably still are, a victim of the following disorder: desire motivated perceptual involuntary auto-enhancement. DMPIA.

For example, we thought the baritone sax sound on the Korg M1 was amazing. It clearly wasn't. Either we'd never really listened to a baritone saxophone, or we never really listened to the M1 sound.

We wanted the sound to be amazing, we wanted to be able to create utterly real saxophone performances. We needed it to be brilliant, so when we played 'Careless Whisper', our brains filled
in the blanks.

Nowadays we use actual recordings of real instruments as the basis of keyboard emulation and how convincing the sounds are is down to how the samples and controllers have been orchestrated.

Kurzweil and Yamaha both have a good reputation for passable piano imitations and now Clavia have entered the fray with the Nord Stage – an 88-key, hammer-action monster.

It's been conceived to do a few things very well, most notably the imitation of some classic keyboard instruments. So let's take off our rose-filtered headphones and have a proper listen.

Hands on

Weighing in at 18.5Kg – considerably less than two grand pianos, two upright pianos, two electric pianos, an electric grand, three organs two synths and a Clavinet – the Stage is an impressive looking instrument presented in Clavia's trademark red.

The keyboard is weighted with a medium hammer-action while the traditional Nord series grey controller wheel and little wooden pitch-bender appear to the left of an un-cluttered looking control panel.

Instrumentally there are three sections in total: The piano section offers ambient miked Steinway Concert Model D and close miked Yamaha C7 grands, Svenska Pianofabriken (Swedish) and Yamaha uprights, a Yamaha CP-80 Electric Grand, Mk I, II and V Rhodes, a Wurlitzer 200A and a Hohner Clavinet D6.

The organ section offers a Hammond B3, a V-Type Vox Continental II and also a Farfisa Compact Deluxe. Synth-wise we have a simple subtractive synth with elements of FM and Wavetable synthesis available to broaden the palette.

There's an External section that deals with playing other MIDI instruments, a Morph feature (particularly useful with the aftertouch) for applying multiple parameter changes to sounds, full layer and split controls and a simple but effective effect section, including compression and amp simulation.

Lastly – you get two! Panels A and B are independent and identical in capability, so if you want you can play two pianos, two organs and two synths, each with their own effects simultaneously.