Press releases: Nord Electro Rack announced

Clavia DMI Press release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Fredrik Hylvander
Int +46 8 442 73 60
Stockholm, Sweden January 10, 2002

Clavia proudly announces the 19" table top rack mountable version of the Nord Electro Virtual Electromechanical stage keyboard! Clavia’s goal when developing the Nord Electro was to create the best emulations of traditional electromechanical keyboard instruments on the market, and according to the customer feedback it seems we have succeeded. The previously released 5 and 6 octave keyboard versions of Nord Electro have become huge successes. A lot of keyboard players and studio musicians still like to use a master keyboard for all their synths and samplers and a for those a rack mount instrument is still the best choice. The new 19" wide and 4 U high Nord Electro Rack will be shown for the first time at the upcoming Winter NAMM show in Anaheim, USA, on January 17-20. The first production units are scheduled for shipment in March this year.

Clavia’s goal when developing the Nord Electro was to create the best emulations of traditional electromechanical keyboard instruments on the market, and to make the instrument compact and lightweight. Nothing else. No brass banks, no orchestral sounds. No compromises. Just outstanding electromechanical keyboard sounds with true feel, from fast keyboard response to authentic sound. To make a great tool you have to focus on a few things, and that’s what we did with the Electro. Think about it, the best tool isn’t a Swiss army knife.

The organ in the Electro is based on a digital simulation 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.
Modeling of the individual random contact bounces for each partial.
Modeling of the unique frequency characteristics of the built-in pre-amplifier which forms the ”body” of the B-3 sound.
Simulation of the "energy stealth" on the tone wheels that results in the typical compressed sound.
Authentic tuning of the tone wheels according to the original B3 design.

The piano section comprises four carefully multi-sampled electric piano instruments: Rhodes Mk I Stage Piano, Wurlitzer 200A, Clavinet D6 and Electric Grand. The Electro features a unique multi-sample playback, catching every nuance from soft to hard hits. Nord Electro comes right out of the box with these four legendary electric piano sounds stored in Flash memory. As an extra bonus we also included an acoustic grand piano (concert model)! The big advantage with Flash memory is that you can replace instruments with new ones and that no backup battery is required. The Electro also sports a USB interface for quick and easy download of new piano sounds.

Nord Electro comes in three different versions: the 5-octave Nord Electro SixtyOne, the 6-octave Nord Electro SeventyThree and the 19" wide and 4 U high Nord Electro Rack. The Nord Electro will certainly set apart on stage, in studios and in shops with its awesome sound quality and striking design.

9 electric drawbars with memory functionality: The drawbars of Nord Electro are represented by up/down 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. In other words, no need for the regular ’trial and error’ method. It's very easy to get the hang of changing the drawbar settings in a natural way with the buttons.

Drawbar settings presets: 8 drawbar presets + 1 random in ROM and 9 user configurable drawbar settings.

Effects: Swell (the characteristic B-3 volume pedal function) - Percussion (2nd, 3rd, normal/soft, fast/slow). Chorus/Vibrato (C1, C2, C3/V1, V2, V3).

Dual manuals - MIDI Split: This feature makes it possible to play the Nord Electro Rack as a 2-manual (Lower and Upper manuals) organ with different drawbar settings for each manual on two separate MIDI channels.

Instruments: 4 multi-sampled electric piano instruments in Flash memory: Rhodes Mk I Stage Piano, Wurlitzer 200A, Clavinet D6 and Electric Grand. As an extra bonus we also included an acoustic grand piano (concert model)!

Memory: 48 user memory locations (6 Banks holding 8 Programs each) in which you can store complete setups, including instrument settings (organ or piano) and effects settings.

Effects: Overdrive, Rotary Speaker simulation (slow, fast, stop), Equalizer, Chorus (2 types), Flanger (2 types), Phaser (2 types), Tremolo, Wah-Wah (2 types), Auto Wah, Auto panning and Ring modulation.

Connections: 2 Audio outputs, 1 Headphone output, 1 Control 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.

Dimensions: W: 19", H: 4 rack units (incl. space for cables), D: 10.5 cm (incl. "feet" and knobs)

* Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Clavinet are trademarks of their respective owners and are not affiliated or associated with Clavia. These trademarks are mentioned only to describe the types of sounds reproduced by Nord Electro.