Clavia

Company history

In 1983, Hans Nordelius and Mikael Carlsson began to work in the basement of a home located in the southern suburbs of Stockholm, creating the world's first dedicated digital drum for the commercial market, called the 'Digital Percussion Plate 1'. In 1984 an improved version that could play four sounds from an EPROM was released under the 'ddrum' name with the now signature red coloring. The same year a drum system was released, where you had several sound modules in a rack, each with its own EPROM. The pads used to trigger the sounds were unusual for the time, since they used real drum heads, where other electronic drum kits of the time used rubber pads. This together with a separate trigger for the snare drum's rim made for a more realistic playing experience. The ddrum brand and products were in 2005 sold to their US distributor Armadillo who continues to manufacture drum products under the name.

In 1995, Clavia released the Nord Lead. Called "a magic piece of electronics" by Sound on Sound it popularized the virtual analog type of synthesis. In 1997 the Nord Lead 2 was released, with many improvements, including increasing polyphony from 4 to 16 notes. The Nord Lead 3 was released in 2001, with a reworked sound engine, better D/A converters and monophonic aftertouch. The most striking aspect of the Nord Lead 3 was that all the sound editing knobs had been replaced with infinite rotary knobs, where the value of the parameter was indicated by a LED 'collar' around the knob. The rotary knobs, LED collars and keyboard with aftertouch made the Nord Lead 3 an "absolute delight" but because of its higher price, the Nord Lead 2 remained in demand. And as some of the parts of the Nord Lead 3 were getting harder to source, Clavia released an updated version of the Nord Lead 2, called the Nord Lead 2x, with faster processors, better D/A converters and an upgraded polyphony to 20 voices. The Nord Lead 3 was discontinued in 2007, but the Nord Lead 2x remains in production.

In 1997 Clavia released the Nord Modular, a virtual analog modular synthesizer. Called a "landmark in synthesis" it allowed you to essentially build your own virtual analog synthesizer. It too was later upgraded with the 2004 release of the Nord Modular G2, that gave it the same endless rotary knobs as the Nord Lead 3 and a larger keyboard with aftertouch.

In 2001 the Nord Electro was released. It was designed to emulate the classical electromechanical keyboards like Hammond organ, electric piano and Hohner Clavinet. The pianos are samples but the organs are modeled using a "digital simulation". Clavia's current models here are the Electro 5, emulating a Hammond B3, a Farfisa and a Vox organ and containing samples of different electric pianos, a Wurlitzer electric piano, a Hohner Clavinet and several acoustic grand and upright pianos; the Nord Piano 2 containing the piano section from the Nord Electro 3 with an 88 key hammer action keyboard; the Nord C2 Organ, a dual manual instrument containing the organ section from the Nord Electro 3 as well as an emulation of a baroque pipe organ; and the Nord Stage 2 which takes the organ and pianos from the Nord Electro and adds a virtual analog synthesizer.

In October 2007 Clavia released the Nord Wave, which adds sample-player functionality to the virtual analog engine of the Nord Lead series and in March 2012 Clavia released the Nord Drum, a virtual analog drum synthesizer.

Products

Discontinued products

Discontinued products list: