Review: North 7 Vintage Keys by Spitfire Audio

North 7 Vintage Keys is a large Kontakt bank by Spitfire Audio, known for the quality of their works. Taking 16 GB compressed on disk and 25 GB uncompressed, this product offers 4 main legendary instruments from the ’60s, 70’s, 80’s: As it’s named on the Spitfire Audio website, we have :

• SPITFIRE ELECTRIC PIANO or “EP”
• ELECTRIC CLAVICHORD or “CLAV”
• STAGE PIANO aka “THE WURLY”
• ELECTRIC PIANO BASS aka “FINGER BASS”

Overview

In Kontakt, instruments are loaded as direct2disk instruments, and this feature seems to be required because Kontakt has to load 1, 2, and even 6 GB single track instruments on a MIDI channel. One Kontakt plugin, player or full, can load several instruments on several MIDI channels so that we can play with the 4 instruments on 4 MIDI channels or any other configuration.

The sound quality is just awesome, you can read who were involved in this project on the product page on Spitfire audio site, they’re talented people playing these instruments for decades. Now you can have 4 of the greatest instruments from the 20th century just in your DAW with Kontakt.

Screenshot of the main GUI:

The very good side of the bank is the Spitfire’s eDNA interface, allowing you to access a big number of parameters in the FX section, as on the main instrument window feeling like a 2 bays (parts) synthesizer.

The sound is light years away from the classic analog synthesizers (TB-303, SH-101, FM synths …) because it’s given by different hardware technologies. You can, of course, tweak the sound as you want in Kontakt 5, (and you can get typical “Synth” instruments from high-quality bass and melody samples) with the powerful eDNA interface, based on 2 areas :

• Mixer & SEQ: allowing edition of the 2 bays, a 2 parts synthesizer with presets and parameters.
• FX & MOTOR: A very powerful 5 parts FX section, focused on melody and bass effects.

This FX section is working with little modules (phaser, delay, …) enabled or not, each having parameters to tweak, in 5 different areas of the mix. I had the Kontakt bank running well in Kontakt 5 player and FL Studio on a Windows 7.

After playing with the Electric Piano, I noticed it’s easy to have distortion or compression if you go in tweaking the effects.

So, in my mind, it’s better to work at -6 or even -10 dB on the general volume level of one instrument. Otherwise, if any note is reaching 0 dB, the FX chain can add unwanted distortion or saturation, compression.

Below you can listen to some samples I recorded with North 7 Vintage Keys. This short melody loop was done with Riff Machine in FL Studio, then I made 3 variations:

N7VK Wurli Loop

N7VK Electric Piano – Soft Glow and Electric Bass Piano

N7VK Electric Piano – Soft Glow and Saturation FX

Conclusion :

Spitfire Audio has made a collector’s bank for musicians interested in classical and electric 60’s to 80’s instruments. The Finger Bass is awesome, the EP too, now it’s available with endless variations and FX on the Kontakt eDNA GUI by Spitfire Audio. I’d say it´s highly recommended to rock, pop and classical, jazz musicians and bands, and electronic tracks composers can have this giant library too for adding a 20th-century side in their music.

For more details about this great Kontakt instrument please follow the link below – you will find video tutorials,  detailed info on each instrument, and how this big library was made. Enjoy!

More Details: North 7 Vintage Keys