Crumar Seven

Since it's not really Pianoteq specific, you might find more information on some other keyboard forums.  A quick search turned these up:

https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/16...umar-seven

https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/18...ne-inquiry

https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/18...umar-seven

https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/18...mmendation

https://forum.pianoworld.com/ubbthreads...seven.html

Based on a quick scan of those, the best summary I could give is probably "excellent Rhodes emulation, cool vintage look, build quality not that great and a little prone to failure."

Today I made a trip to test Crumar Seven so I can answer my own questions

1) action and playability: because Seven’s main realm is EPs (Rhodes & Wurly) action is too heavy. It takes out realism of playability. While being relatively heavy Fatar keybed didn’t still feel like grand piano either.
2) Rhodes is great model, Wurly is good, Acoustic piano mediocre or even bad. Sounds are quite raw - something that you might get from line outs from real instrument. There’s  no much to do with them like EQ, Compression etc. so this might be problem on different stage situations. There are basic FXs to color sound though.
3) hardware: it has nice retro looks, unit is relatively light to carry but I did not like its Star Wars colored encoders. To my ears those colored encoders made it look little cheap.

+ to my use it’s too simple to be useful. In this respect for example Nord Piano 5 might be better. I was looking for a personal, unique instrument but those three points made it clear that Seven is not what want.

It’s compromise for sure. But what it comes to Nords I concider myself kind of an expert: I have had Nord Stage2, Nord Stage3, Nord Piano2 , Nord Grand now Nord Stage4. I must admit that 2019 I was so excited about Grand, collaboration of Nord and Kawai, that I bought it immediately without testing and THAT was disappoinment. My interpretation was that Kawai did not clearly give best action to its rival.

When I got new Stage 4 it felt somehow better and action was quieter than Grand. So then I sold Grand away and now I need a second board (also maybe 88, my Stage4 is 73). If I am right new Piano 5 with triple action keyboard is quite same that one in Stage 4. It’s not realistic like Kawai’s best keyboards but I have reason to believe that it’s still a good choise. Maybe best for me.

And why I am so stuck with Nords is obvious to me: their sound. That’s best on marker IMO both EPs and APs. Lot of variety and character. If you compare Nord sound to Roland, Yamaha or Kawai is same like you compare Jaguar to Toyota. Well that’s my opinion

As said above from Crumar 7 I was looking for something personal and something unique character. Unfortunately it did not meet my wishes.

Now I am back where I started. If someone has an hint for a stage piano keyboard I am glad to hear. Fortunately I am not in a hurry. If there’s no good choise available I can wait for new products to emerge…

Thanks! Vintage Vibe and new real Rhodes are of course fantastic but uh… way out of my budget. Numa X GT deserves a closer look.

To be sure what Nord exactly did you play and struggled with? I suppose having hard time to adapt to Nords is more about their keyboards than about their sound. Also there’s a vast library of pianos on their free Piano Library with different sizes of sample sets - I have carefully chosen few, loaded the biggest (detailed versions) and adjusted them to my playing. Takes little effort to find what you really want, Nords aren’t plug and play pianos like Rolands.

But as my (little provocative) comparison Jaguar vs. Toyota does NOT claim that Nord is the easiest piano to play. I admit that keybed has been weakeast link on their quite expensive boards. But it has improved lot recently. And sound, is not like Toyota - quite nice but tasteless, odorless and lacking personal character. Those Japanese companies have analysed and smoothed their pianos to ”perfect” which to my ears sound cold, soulles and unnatural. Nord on the contrary have sampled and kept all those minor imperfections, some pianos can be even slightly out of tune, like in real life. That’s what I wanna hear, not ”Supenatural V-piano engine” or whatever.