I'm growing to like this synth a lot day by day,Ten years ago I owned the Original Lead,and didn't really take to it much,although it was a Very easy synth to program,I found the sound rather harsh and grungy,but at the time this was the first VA I had used and pretty much up until 1997 When I first bought the Nord,I had been using Romplers for nearly a decade and so was used to the typical sound of a Workstation.
I bought the Nord on reccomendation of a friend,but felt after a while it didn't fit in with my Musical output at the time,this kind of put me off it when the JP8000 Came along as it had a more smoother and warming sound that I liked,I ditched the Nord and traded it in for the JP8080 rack when it came out,since then I have never been bothered with the Nord Synths and pretty much steered away from them ever since.
I bought this Mark 1 again recently,mainly as a project to repair it cos it was cheap(£75)and maybe sell it on for a small profit,I've had to buy and solder a few new Leds and spend some time cleaning and servicing it but,I hate seeing synthesizers go to ruin and had to save it,even if I never really had a Liking for them since I owned one.
I've repaired it and give it a new lease of life and been playing around with it since,I guess that your ears and tastes change over the years,as I have taken to the Nord sound second time around,I actually forgot how great it was to program,I guess over the past however many years that many synth manufacturers have swamped there VA synth patches with fx to make them glossy,yet the Nord Mk1 has none,in comparison to many of the VA I have its Quite a Beefy sound without any Gimmicks of FX to make it sound larger than it is,the Nord doesn't hide behind a mask of tricks it is exactly what it is a true VA Synthesizer
most of the time when I record stuff I turn the fx off and just treat the raw sound once its mixed,But on many synths once you turn off the FX its Quite a boring sound,the Nord sort of removes that gloss and sounds Quite nice(If a little harsh on some leads)For the time Being I shall Keep the Nord,and intergrate it into my Songs,If it doesn't work out then I'll move on.
The Nords Quite a Breath of fresh air in the synth world and I can see now why it was so popular(MK2 at least),at the time I owned the MK1 in 1997 I never really got the concept of the Clavia VA world,I don't think I was Quite ready to embrace it until the JP came along,by this time I had fell out of love with the Nords,I find now the Nords are more true to a real analog synthesizer replication,its more of a raw sound thats capable of some interesting sounds,you need to look beyond what it can't do in comparison to other VA like the JP and An1x or Virus TI,and see it what it does have to offer,infact if you take all the efx off those other VA you hear that the Nord is Quite large and doesn't need those fx anyway,and you can certainly see that in the way they have been so popular against all those other VA alternatives over the last 10 years or so,I'm now interested in seeing what the MK3 has to offer over the Previous Lead Models..
Personally I prefer the Nord for analog replication mainly because I can easily pull out the sound I want. When I work on the SH201 and the Microkorg, I always turn back to the Nord as I didn't get the sound I want. Maybe my skills are not decent enough to program any synth I want, but I still get the result I want on the Nord in the end most of the time.
Of course it's nice if a synth looks cool, etc., but it's secondary. If you refrain from buying a good sounding synth, just because you don't like its looks, then you're having a problem. 
