With its distinctive appearance and mould-breaking return to the immediacy and sound of analogue, the Nord Lead set a high standard when it appeared back in 1995. The series spawned three distinct hardware incarnations, plus the revamped (and still current) Nord Lead 2X. Now, some seven years after the Nord Lead 3, we see its logical successor.

You'll be pleased to hear Clavia have finally acknowledged built-in effects as a good idea, but it is the inclusion of sample playback that marks an entirely new direction — and a new name! Ladies and gentlemen, let me introduce the Nord Wave: a keyboard that combines the essence of the Nord Lead with a hearty chunk of quick-booting sample RAM.

Other than the text printed boldly on the panel, there aren't many visual clues to this move into fresh territory. There's a much-needed LCD, so you can name your patches — as on the Nord Lead 3. However, the LED-ringed encoders that set that synth apart from its siblings have been retired (like the Nord Lead 3 itself) in favour of a return to the original style of knobs. Rather than wallow in elaborate comparisons with previous models, let's just pitch in, making them whenever necessary.

The Nord Wave is first and foremost a performance instrument. Its 18 notes of polyphony are fine for most lead roles and the added bonus of two 'slots' (A & B) available to each patch, is an effective means of layering different sounds or quickly switching between two related sounds. Think of each slot as a self-contained patch that includes all the parameters that have a grey background on the panel. Each slot thus has unique EQ and chorus settings, but not reverb, delay and tube simulation, which are global. This system has served Clavia well in the past, but whereas previous Nord Leads featured four slots, the Nord Wave has just two, both of which share the single stereo audio output.

The Nord Wave's generous patch library urges you to spread out and experiment. There are eight banks of 128 patches, making a massive total of 1024 which is, in effect, doubled if both slots are used. It's never difficult to find your way around, either: the use of categories and alphabetical sorting can greatly minimise the time spent searching through the banks. Only three of these banks are initially populated, and they feature prime examples of the factory string, choir and organ samples, as well as acoustic and electric pianos, basses, and a smattering of pads, leads and wibbly noises. If anything, it's analogue-type voices that are thinnest on the ground, but a few hours of knob-twiddling revealed the Nord Wave to be as adept in this department as the Nord Lead 2x. Indeed, the Wave's tone seems closer to that synth than the more blatantly digital Nord Lead 3.

As is often the case, I didn't receive a manual with the review model. After skimming the on-line version and sitting with the synth for five minutes, I realised it wasn't going to be necessary. Clavia's ethos is to banish operational ambiguity as far as possible, so there's minimal menu-hopping, and everything is laid out before your eyes. Any buttons with alternate (shifted) functions have an associated LED to inform you when these are in use.

Nord Wave synthesis consists of a familiar twin-oscillator section, LFO and ADSR envelope architecture with an additional two-stage modulation envelope, six different types of filter, a dual-band EQ and chorus. Keeping things compact, the keyboard is four octaves long and the whole instrument weighs only 6kg. Happily, Clavia have retained their wonderful and unique pitch-bender and also the thin modulation wheel, transposition buttons and chord memory. The last is nifty: you play a chord, which the synth memorises, assuming the first note is root. Chord memory then triggers up to three notes relative to every...