This synth has quite a hefty price tag, listed at $2500 and going for $2200 on various online music retail sites.
Has anyone had a chance playing with one? I can't find too much information on it other than press releases and preview articles and such. I know that's because this keyboard has only been out less than three months. I'm interested in knowing if anyone on here has tinkered around with one of these smooth machines.
I've heard nothing but great things about the Nord Lead 1 & 2, curious if the Lead 3 is a huge step forward. I guess that's what I'm trying to find out besides reading "more polyphony equals fatter sound, blah blah blah." Thanks in advance!
Well, you can finally sync the LFO to MIDI!
The new rotary knobs are really cool too. And the Nord Leads have been weak is in the performance sector, but the Nord Lead 3 has multi keyboard splits, an arpeggiator and polyphonic legato and stuff.
Soundwise, the new oscillators have a load of interesting ways to modulate and distort things, and I only played with it a bit in the store, but you could get some weird sounds. The new multi-filter mode is cool to, you can get filters with two or three peaks/notches. I liked that, you can get more "vocal" sounds if you have several resonant peaks.
But probably, you have to fiddle with both a 2 and a 3 and make your own mind up.
The reviewer, Rick Snoman, makes the claim that the Lead 3 does not sound like an analogue synthesizer, sounds too digital by saying the sounds are "more like DCOs than VCOs, and listening to the oscillators didn't persuade me otherwise. True, you can build some monster patches and the results sound very good, but they don't really have the warmth you associate with analogue." I suppose this may be a valid argument for those who want an analogue sound, but I was interested in learning about the versatility of the machine. I'm basically looking for a kick arse synthesizer for the long haul.
He teases the reader at the very end by saying that there are other synthesizers out there that are cheaper and sound more analogue than this one. The Nord Lead 3 is quite expensive, and unfortunately the local guitar shop here is geared toward the college rock band types doing Dave Matthews Band covers for free beer, so they don't have a Lead 3 to test out. I could try calling the Guitar Center in Sacramento to see if they have one to pound away on. In the meantime, I welcome anyone to participate in this discussion. Looking for people's opinions on this keyboard. Thanks.
I'm disappointed in the turnout for this thread, but I have more information people might be interested in. There is some good user feedback about the Nord Lead 3 over on sonicstate.com and I even discovered a link posted by John Schur here where he has about 23 samples of Nord Lead 3 sounds, total running time of 5 minutes and 33 seconds.
Another note, recently there was another user who posted a review on the Nord Lead 3 over at Harmony Central. Apparently he pre-ordered one from zZounds eons ago when they were taking advanced orders at $1700. When I first asked him about the price, he gave me a very irritated response of "you know I've gotten 10 inquiries about this today." I asked him more questions but he never responded back, I guess he had better things to do.
