Some distinct organ sounds have remained popular throughout the decades of pop and rock & roll music -- soulful sounds that breathe and growl as found only in heavy, bulky vintage instruments. Apart from difficulties in sourcing, restoring, and maintaining these vintage organs, their sheer size and weight make them anything but ideal for the gigging musician -- especially when you add out-board effects, amplifiers and speakers.

Now Clavia brings you the very best of those classic setups in a single package. The dual manual Nord C1 Combo Organ comprises three types of vintage organs: a classical tonewheel, Vox* Continental and Farfisa* Compact Deluxe, all carefully modeled from their originals. Also featuring Clavia's famous tube style overdrive, rotating speaker simulation, delay, reverb and 3-band EQ effects, the Nord C1 will tailor sounds for your body, mind and soul.

Under The Hood
The original mechanical tonewheel design as well as the Vox* and Farfisa* transistor designs result in diverse interactions between the different parts involved in the sound generating process. Modern sampling technology is able to play back the result of these interactions, but cannot duplicate the dynamic and random processes involved. Without these crucial steps represented, the response and feel of actually playing the instrument is inevitably lost.

The solution is a real-time, DSP-based model describing the construction and interaction between each part involved. The Nord C1 Combo Organ… read more offers three different organs -- all carefully modeled from vintage originals -- with the sonic result of each part of the tonewheel and transistor designs recreated faithfully.

Digital Drawbars & Switches
The fabulous sound aside, some areas of the original instruments' design were up for improvement. For instance, the ability to store your favorite sounds and quickly recall them as you play. This gets hard, as the original switches and drawbar levers physical position will not match the stored sound setting. The Nord C1's digital drawbars features LED segments that instantly light up to show the current setting. The digital drawbars are just as fast as their physical counterparts, and setting up your sound from scratch -- even live -- is done in no time at all.

3rd Set Of Drawbars
No two manual organ would be complete without the ability to play bass notes on a pedal board. The Nord C1 includes two additional bass register drawbars with selectable timbre from either vintage tonewheels or a synth bass. The bass can be controlled with any MIDI-enabled bass pedal board, or by splitting the lower manual.

Living Effects
The built-in 3-band equalizer along with three types of speaker simulations and an extremely powerful overdrive offers you total tonal control of your sound. Add a feedback-delay with tap-tempo functionality, and several types of reverberation and you truly have an all-in-one effect section with stunning sound right out of the box.

Round And Round
The rotary speaker simulation from Clavia's award winning Nord Stage and Nord Electro series has been further improved, and now features an even more life-like experience. The Nord C1's rotary speaker sim incorporates the acoustic variations that occur as a physical rotating speaker spreads the sound around in a room, providing the experience of truly moving the air around.

High Level Outputs
Got volume? The Nord C1 has it in abundance. In addition to its standard line-level outputs the Nord C1 Organ features an 11-pin Leslie* connector. This allows you to transfer the sound directly to your speaker cabinet as well as to control the rotating speed from the Nord C1 Organs front panel. If your speaker cabinet does not feature the 11-pin Leslie* standard connector you can use the high level quarter inch audio output.

Amplify And Testify
You can divide the stereo line output to separate tonewheel and transistor organ outputs, and connect them to separate amp set-ups.

Superior Response
An ultra low trigger-to-sound response time in the Nord C1 Combo Organ offers superior performance compared to any hardware and especially software products. Also, like the vintage original, the sound generation is started the very instant a key is pressed, not like conventional digital keyboard action, where the sound begins when the key hits bottom.

More Than Volume
One type of input is often neglected, and yet it plays a vital part of your performance; the swell pedal. Without the proper response of the pedal you can easily lose focus when expression is called for. It is more than just volume control - the frequency response characteristics are also modeled. Further, a wide array of expression pedal manufacturers are supported to give you the perfect volume swell in every situation.

On The Road
Having three vintage organs in your studio is fun, but it's even better when you can easily carry them with you to a gig. That is why it is so great that the Nord C1 Combo Organ is lightweight and truly portable. With the optional gig bag, you can carry the massive power of three vintage monster organs in one hand; weighing in at merely 15kg (33lb) you will save energy for your performance.

Appearance
The Nord C1 Organ is not just about smart design and gorgeous sound; it is about stage presence. Its bright red panel and red varnished birch side panels give the organ a classic style with modern sensibility.

The New Tonewheel Beast
Clavia has been developing DSP-based vintage organ models for a decade, and the Nord C1 is built on that award-winning legacy. Clavia's new 2nd generation tonewheel organ model provides the perfect tonewheel sound and playing experience. You now have the most detailed response not only to what you hear but also to how it feels playing the instrument. The Nord C1 Organ moves beyond "close enough" to "dead-on" sound and feel.

Go With The Flow
The unique tonewheel generator design is the heart of a classic tonewheel organ. This is where the basic sound is created by 91 spinning discs and magnetic coils. Clavia has modeled all tone generators for a full polyphony of 147 notes. The model also includes significant artifacts like wheel crosstalk, cable leakage and coil energy robbing. Especially the energy robbing is crucial for organ playing techniques. Acting as a gentle dynamic level compression, it gives you the possibility to do slides and glides over the keyboard with a dynamic harmonic sound that is full and pleasant.

Perceptional Percussion
The Vintage Percussion's mono-polyphonic character creates an intuitive feedback as you play, and is a defining characteristic of a classic tonewheel organ. All components involved - filter, distortion, and envelope characteristics - have been carefully and faithfully replicated.

The Perfect Click
One of the most important sound factors for a tonewheel organ is the transient of a starting note, also known as the "click". This transient is not just a click sound added to the tone. It originates from how the mechanical busbar switches turn on all nine partials of the sound. Clavia have made a model of virtually all 1200 switches of the busbar matrix simulating how every single switch randomly bounces at the onset of a note.

The Chorus/Vibrato Experience
The Nord C1's chorus and vibrato were created in the same manner as the tonewheel models -- analyzing and replicating the physical components involved in their mechanical ancestors. More than a mere simulation of these effects, the C1's chorus and vibrato are as alive as the tonewheels themselves. The rotating design of the vintage scanner has a deep impact on the organ's sound. Matching the correct speed is easy - the life is in the characteristics of the analog circuitry scanned by the turning capacitive plates.

Transistor Mania
The Nord C1 includes models of the two most popular transistor organs of the 1960s, offering you that massive savage sound created by their 12-top oscillator frequency-divider designs. This is a nosample zone; you have the same behavior and unique response as the original instruments. The Farfisa* Compact Deluxe, considered by many to be the mother of transistor organs, involves routing matrixes and complex filter combinations that offer a tailored sound with massive energy and high-end.As with the tonewheel organ, both transistor organs have their own unique, irreplaceable personalities. Combine them with any of the Nord C1's speaker simulations, add some distortion, adjust EQ and they will definitely light your fire.The Vox* Continental's brute design brings you a more hollow tone, but still with a very intense character.

* Farfisa, Vox and Leslie are trademarks of their respective owners and are not affiliated or associated with Clavia. Farfisa and Vox are mentioned only to describe the types of sounds reproduced by the Nord C1 Combo Organ. Leslie is only mentioned to describe a contact standard.

The Nord C1 development story...
First some history: at the time of designing the Nord C1 Combo Organ, Clavia had already been developing digital tonewheel organ models for a decade. The first model featured in the Nord Electro series of instruments was designed to fit comfortably in a multi electro-mechanical instrument along side various piano implementations. With focus given to fit several mechanical instruments into a single package, you are always forced to make some compromises. We never intended the Electro to be the perfect vintage tonewheel organ replacement, but it turned out to be one of the more popular units on the market, much due to it's high quality of sound, portability and attractive price.

Though not surprised we were definitely thrilled when the Electro started to appear in different magazine's tonewheel clone tests and shoot-outs. It was included for its fabulous sound that some found to be better that far more expensive hard core clone units. However, due to its single manual and additional piano samples, it was generally included "out of contest".

With the Nord C1 Combo Organ we wanted to design an instrument without having to find the right blend of things; like piano vs. organ keyboard action, or multi-effects suited for a wide array of sounds. We wanted to focus on the things needed for killer organ sounds, and those things only.

Also we had developed some great transistor organ models for the Nord Stage series of instruments. An obvious choice was to include these as well for the ultimate three-in-one lightweight vintage organ package.

Some areas we knew were up for improvement prior to the start of the project, others were found along the way. What really paid off was focusing on each of the components involved in the sound generating process, rather than just the sounding outcome. After spending thousands of man hours leaving no detail untouched - no matter how small and seemingly insignificant - we believe we have not only reproduced the perfect tonewheel sound but also the proper response and feel of playing the original instrument. We hope this instrument will give you as much fun to play as it has given us to develop.

Best wishes
the Clavia team read less