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I recently played the first reception sort of gig with my CP5 – and couldn't help thinking about the convenience of, say a P155, whose integrated speakers should have been enough for making an already nice buffet a little nicer.

Not that I would want to trade in the CP5's sound and response, of course – but anyway

I agree with what's been said about built-in speakers adding to convenience in many situations. On the FP series there's a switch to disable them, so that further extends that type of board's applicability when other monitoring equipment is preferred/needed.

But there's also another advantage. Most boards with speakers also have a line-in. So if channels are at a premium on whatever mixer is being used, or you need basic monitoring of a second board as well, the line-in gives you more flexibility.

+5! Nord offers the best overall set of compromises for performance boards out there IMHO.
Yamahas and Kurweils do have great EPs. My opinion of Kurzweils in particular has changed significantly lately. I used think they were crap boards until I played some and heard some great sounding samples.

I'd be interested to try the EPs on the latest Kurzweils, although for the time being the Sparkletop '67 with a little 'Combo' speaker drive on my Electro 3 is sounding pretty tasty!

The band I'm currently playing with are hoping to give 'Street Life' a work-out at Tuesday's practise, so looking forward to taking the new Electro along for a jam. I'm just wondering how useful the Nord's amp sims are when you're typically plugging into a guitar amp anyway - e.g. if I'm connected up to a Roland Jazz Chorus, is there any point in using the 'JC' speaker simulation?

Cheers,
James
x

If what you're working with is anything like guitar modelers, you don't want to use a speaker simulation unless you're running into something that Full Range/Flat Response (FRFR). They're basically an EQ that will cut and boost frequency ranges to make it sound like the speaker in that cab. If you're going to run that through an actual guitar cab speaker, it's then going to be cut and boosted again, and probably not for the better.

For example, a Celestion V30 has about a 15 dB falloff from 150hz down to 60hz. If you have a speaker emulation that does that and then you put it through a real speaker that does that same thing, I imagine you're not going to hear what you want from those frequencies. Also most guitar speakers start dropping off in the 4k hz range so you'd have the same thing with sounds above that.

At least for guitar, these simulations are tailored for when you run direct to the FOH or into something that's FRFR.

All that said, you can always try and see what you think too.