NE-5 with weighted 88 controller, or separate SP?

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Hey everyone,

I've been using a Nord Electro 3 with Ocean City drawbars for about 6 years now, and I'm in a mood to upgrade. (A little GAS.)

I'm eyeing the NE5 because I love the NE3's clav sounds, and I play mostly soul & funk & 60s/70s rock. I want to use it with an 88-key controller so I can play piano/EP parts on weighted keys, and assign "splits" where I can play Hammond/clav on the NE5 and Rhodes on the controller. However, I haven't seen a lot of reviews of NE5 as a brain for this setup. Does anyone use the NE5 with a secondary keyboard exclusively? Any recommendations? I used to slave a Kurzweil SP88 to my NE2 and liked the action, but I think I might want something newer, like an Arturo KeyLab or Roland A-88, that has a few more bells & whistles.

There seem to be a lot of moving parts involved with the NE5's splits, so I always end up wondering if I might be better off with something like a Korg SV-1 that is an independent rig with good piano/EP sounds.
 
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Oh wow, that'd be terrible! I thought the NE5 had just moved the clav filter combinations to the display only, so you could use them, but it was a little more fiddly than the 3's arrangement. Ugh.

Do you know if the Hammond SKs have dynamic clav modeling?

Might just stick with the NE3, then...
 
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I purchased the desktop version of this:

http://www.genuinesoundware.com/?a=showproduct&b=43

The clav is 100% modeled (no sampling). The 6 filter tabs as well as the mute bar are assigned to the sliders on my PC3 so I have complete control of all combinations of settings. It sounds authentic plus you get VB3-II and about two dozen other instruments.

Listen to the demo of the link above.
 
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Okay, now I am obsessed with going to the Gemini & the DMC-122. I am not much of a MIDI guy--the most I've ever done with MIDI was to plug in my Ocean City drawbars--but the editor looks relatively easy to use, and it looks like, if you pay the 1500$ for the controller and the 900$ for the Gemini expansion, you get a great gigging keyboard.

Any tips on going from the NE3 to the GSI setups? I'm a bit worried about the problem with the wonky lower clav sounds pointed out in this video. Is that a problem, or just a preset this guy needs to fix?

 
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That's Abeck's video. That video was posted with the first release of the Gemini (v1.0). The Gemini is up to release 1.15 now. The low end of the Clav has been retuned since then based on customer requests. I use the Clav alot and there are no longer tuning issues. Also, there are three Gemini modules, one mounts into the DMC122, one is a rackmount and one is a table top. The rackmount and table top can be MIDI'd to your E3 so you would only be looking at the cost of the Gemini module. The drawbuttons and other controllers on the E3 can be used to control the drawbars on the Gemini, the filter switches on the Clav, the tremolo resonance/speed on the wurli/rhodes and other controls on the Gemini. This makes it a cheap upgrade option and the reason why I purchased it.
 
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