NP2 pricing at Sweetwater (and new member)
Posted: 26 Jan 2012, 20:44
Hi all,
New member here. I got a chuckle out of the screening question - "what's the dominate key in D"? Really should be dominant "tone" don't you think? The use of the word "key" threw me off as I was thinking "key as in signature" instead of "key as in keyboard".
I'm an intermediate (okay, "Crappy") piano/kb player trying to get more serious. I currently play a circa 2001[?] RD-700 with the SRX-02 expansion played through a pair of M-Audio studio monitors. Never done any gigging with a band but hope to someday. The pianos on the RD-700 are growing unsastifactory as my ability grows - it has serious issues with notes "jumping out" in very unnatural ways. In some ways this is a training aid for playing evenly but it also gets really annoying. So - I've been looking to step up to something better.
I played the Kronos, the RD-700NX and the V-piano and actually liked the V quite a lot but not enough to throw down the mad cash. The Roland pianos were a bit sterile sounding to me and the rest of the instrument seemed to be the exact same samples on my original RD! And it was harder to use on top of everything, so I was turned off by it. The Kronos sounded pretty good but the action was "meh" and it's really wayyy too much keyboard for me. I will never use 99% of its features. The V had a great action and some great sounds (the silver grand was awesome) but it's just too inflexible - I like to rock out the occasional synth and Rhodes. So my attention turned to the Nord, which I have never seen or heard outside of the Internet. I am a little worried by the action (having never played one) but could maybe learn to live with and given everything else it can do I am ready to live with it. The price on that NS2 is a real buzzkill though so I considered the NP but it seems a bit constrained. I've gone through this forum backward and forward - there's a lot of great info on here and some intimidatingly good players.
Anyway - I read the NP2 announcement with some interest and wondered about pricing. Sweetwater has pricing today - $2995 for the NP2. IMO it's too high. It's quite a bit more than the RD-700NX which to me seems like its main competition. RD700NX has a better reputation for action and while some sounds are weaker some are better. NS2s or Korg Kronos's can be had for <3500 if you look around a bit and the difference is huge. I probably won't really use arpeggiators and some of the more elaborate features of a stage 2 but I'd rather get a board I can "grow into" than one I am likely to grow out of. From my point of view if all I wanted was piano sounds the RD700NX would look like the best deal, but it seems like different in what you get for ~$2500 versus ~3500 is enormous and probably worth the extra cost. I don't think the NP2 will be a very big seller at nearly $3000. However if they dropped the NP2 to $3200 or so I don't think they'd be able to keep up with the demand.
New member here. I got a chuckle out of the screening question - "what's the dominate key in D"? Really should be dominant "tone" don't you think? The use of the word "key" threw me off as I was thinking "key as in signature" instead of "key as in keyboard".
I'm an intermediate (okay, "Crappy") piano/kb player trying to get more serious. I currently play a circa 2001[?] RD-700 with the SRX-02 expansion played through a pair of M-Audio studio monitors. Never done any gigging with a band but hope to someday. The pianos on the RD-700 are growing unsastifactory as my ability grows - it has serious issues with notes "jumping out" in very unnatural ways. In some ways this is a training aid for playing evenly but it also gets really annoying. So - I've been looking to step up to something better.
I played the Kronos, the RD-700NX and the V-piano and actually liked the V quite a lot but not enough to throw down the mad cash. The Roland pianos were a bit sterile sounding to me and the rest of the instrument seemed to be the exact same samples on my original RD! And it was harder to use on top of everything, so I was turned off by it. The Kronos sounded pretty good but the action was "meh" and it's really wayyy too much keyboard for me. I will never use 99% of its features. The V had a great action and some great sounds (the silver grand was awesome) but it's just too inflexible - I like to rock out the occasional synth and Rhodes. So my attention turned to the Nord, which I have never seen or heard outside of the Internet. I am a little worried by the action (having never played one) but could maybe learn to live with and given everything else it can do I am ready to live with it. The price on that NS2 is a real buzzkill though so I considered the NP but it seems a bit constrained. I've gone through this forum backward and forward - there's a lot of great info on here and some intimidatingly good players.
Anyway - I read the NP2 announcement with some interest and wondered about pricing. Sweetwater has pricing today - $2995 for the NP2. IMO it's too high. It's quite a bit more than the RD-700NX which to me seems like its main competition. RD700NX has a better reputation for action and while some sounds are weaker some are better. NS2s or Korg Kronos's can be had for <3500 if you look around a bit and the difference is huge. I probably won't really use arpeggiators and some of the more elaborate features of a stage 2 but I'd rather get a board I can "grow into" than one I am likely to grow out of. From my point of view if all I wanted was piano sounds the RD700NX would look like the best deal, but it seems like different in what you get for ~$2500 versus ~3500 is enormous and probably worth the extra cost. I don't think the NP2 will be a very big seller at nearly $3000. However if they dropped the NP2 to $3200 or so I don't think they'd be able to keep up with the demand.