#alesis ion

[bestsynthtourney]

Round 1:

Which synth do you like more?

Oberheim DMX

Alesis Ion

Voting ended onApr 2

This is based off of LOOKS, not sound or reputation.

Propaganda below the cut!

DMX: "Used by New Order on Blue Monday and sued [sic*] by lots of other artists"

*used

[mysynthfetish]

Alesis ION and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

So after a bit of noodling with the MicroFreak, which I am enjoying though I do find myself starting to become annoyed with certain things, I thought I'd fire up the ION and screw around with that one for a change, only to discover that the m1 wheel was acting wonky. I have the LEDs for the wheels set to change brightness depending on their position (the further away from zero, the brighter) and though the pitch and m2 wheels were functioning properly, the LED for the m1 wheel was freaking out blinking on and off and staying on then suddenly shutting off and doing all sorts of This Is Not Normal stuff. Great! Just what I need! Aaaaaaargh.

Anyway. I've been buying dead Photon series keyboard controllers off the auction here for about a year and a bit now, with the sole intent to use them for parts harvesting as the knobs and wheels are exact, drop-in (or push-on) compatible with the ION, and Cuntaur, I mean, Syntaur, ahem, well they charge way too much for what they're selling (I mean, $5 a knob, really?!), though sometimes there's no other option. So I had spare parts enough to just desolder the connection, yank out the wheel assembly, put in a working one, solder the pot connection and bam we're good to go. Here's a photo of the wheel assembly:

As far as I can tell, the value of the pot is the same (B5k I think) though the wonky one was reading like over 5m and the reading was continually fluctuating so I dunno what the hell happened to that thing, but it's in full Freak Out mode so whatever, yanked that fucker outta there. The assembly, as I mentioned above, is drop-in compatible so that made things nice and easy. So any of you ION owners out there who are worried about the longevity and availability of parts, maybe looking on evilbay or reverb or whatever for the photon series of controllers is something you should consider. I don't think I've paid more than $40 for one, and that one is a currently fully functional deal that I use to control some stuff even now. In any case, the ION is back to full health.

Something struck me after noodling with it too. The MicroFreak can do a lot more synthesis types, and the sequencer (and accompanying four-lane knob recording deal) is a great tool to have at your disposal, but I found that I enjoyed the results much more with the ION. Sure, the ION only has three waveforms per oscillator, but you can waveshape them, and thanks to an extensive, totally set-it-up-how-you-want mod matrix, as well as the drive and (measly) effects sections, somehow I ended up feeling that the ION is sort of head and shoulders above the MicroFreak, but that's just my opinion. I like the MicroFreak, don't get me wrong. But some things are happening that are forcing my hand with reducing studio/gear collection size, and the MF will most likely be on its way out pretty soon. And it's a shame because it's a fun little machine. Oh well, that's how it goes I guess. Anyway, see ya next time!

[mysynthfetish]

Alesis ION and on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

Right. Had a sudden visit from Mr Migraine from about midnight last night so no work today for yours truly, or falsely, what in this day and age of fake news and fake presidunces and all that fucking asshattery. Anyway...

So I thought since I had the time, FINALLY, I’d take care of some minor problems that still remain on the ION. First, the tact switches in the Part section were starting to get stubborn so I thought I’d swap em out for new ones. Taking apart an ION is always an adventure thanks to the puzzle-like way they designed the case, mainly where the top and bottom come together along the back side, and also how you have to carefully raise and slide the top up and out forwards to keep the bottom front edge there from catching on the bottoms of the keys and snapping them off. If this sounds like someone talking from experience, well, yeah so I snapped three of the fucking things off. But when I glued them back I saw that whoever had fiddled around inside the thing before I owned it had also snapped one off, so there. And now, on with the Action Photos!

Here we see, through a big fat magnifying glass on a gooseneck that I use, the wonderful and rewarding process of de-soldering using Hakko Desoldering Wick. Pain in the ass, but done carefully and patiently you can get all eight of these bastards outta there in about twenty minutes.

In the above photo you will find fine examples of new tact switches made by Omron. The more keen-eyed of you out there will notice that they are not the blue-colored deals that Alesis went with originally. Couldn’t find those. I found yellow ones, and white ones too though, the only difference as far as I can tell being the force needed to actuate the switch and the tactile response (how ‘clicky’ the switch feels). I’m sure if I went through the trouble of Google-sleuthing data sheets for these I could find the exact details about what the colors designate but AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FO’ DAT!

One issue that has been bugging me in the back of my mind for about a year or two now is a result of a mishap that happened when I first got this ION. It had a load of issues that needed to be dealt with in order to be able to just use the thing. (You can find a post about that here someplace). When I first opened the case up to begin the lengthy process of Doing What Needed To Be Done, I inadvertently yanked the LCD ribbon cable outta the socket on the side where it plugs into the main PCB, half destroying that end of the cable in the process. The problem here is twofold: first, the cable is WAY too short, and second, you need to be really careful when opening up an ION. Anyway, I ordered a replacement ribbon cable that was about 20cm longer than the shortish factory one (DIGI-KEY part no. HF18U-18-ND, cable ffc 18pos 1.00mm 18″), and it’s been sitting on a shelf for about a year now I guess? Lazy fucker. Oh shit, I just looked at the package and it says the order date was Jan 30 2018! HAHAHA!!! Goddam lazy lima bean. Anyway so in the photo above, you can see I’ve desoldered and cleaned up the pads on the backside of the LCD board where the cable gets soldered. Yeah, soldered. Usually these kinds of ribbon cable (or flex cable? I dunno what the fuck they’re called) plug in to sockets on both sides of the cable. But oh no, that would make things too easy! BUT, I do see why they did it this way. There’s a plastic housing that the LCD unit itself snaps into, and the housing gets screwed down to the underside of the front panel. So to save space, instead of having a fat socket jutting out, they went with the solder option. Fuck.

I had a real BLAST dealing with this. First I thought I’d just cut away the plastic and expose the flat metal wires, but that turned out to be super slow and I ran the risk of accidentally cutting off one of the wires so I didn’t wanna do that, really. I was sitting there thinking “If only there was a way to melt the plastic straight off the wiring, like slide it right off like butter or something.” Well. I had a soldering iron sitting right next to me. Hmmmm. You can see where this is going I imagine. I taped the ribbon down to a small piece of spare plywood I have, then just scraped the plastic off with the soldering iron, slowly and carefully, wiping the iron off every time. I was done in a minute or two. Then I had a peep through a loupe at the exposed ends and saw a bit of plastic residue, so I carefully sanded that off. Next was the nerve-racking process of soldering the shit together. My hands shake like a sack of pissed off rattlesnakes anymore, so it was super slow and steady going, two-handed grip on the soldering iron, careful, careful work. But in the end, success!

There are still a handful of switches that are starting to be stubborn and could be replaced, but I’d had enough already and decided to just put the thing back together and call it a day and then have lunch and write this so there you go.

Nothing is impossible if you take your time, calm down, and think things through. A hefty bit of MacGyvering doesn’t hurt either. 

[mysynthfetish]

ION and on and on

Yeah yeah yeah. So this happened:

Another fixer-upper. Fucking hell. This was actually a rarity in that it wasn’t listed as “junk” (the Yahoo Auction absolve-me-from-any-responsibility-whatsoever keyword). The seller did say that there were some issues: “This is the hard to find Alesis ION. I’m rearranging my set up so I decided to list it here on the auction. Includes owners manual and power cable. Works normally but because there are so many functions I haven’t checked them all. As such, this is a no-claim, no-return sale. Some switches take a few presses to respond, the keys have yellowed, there are scratches here and there on the front panel and corners, and one of the knobs has melted a little and is a bit sticky to the touch. If you have any questions please ask before bidding.” Hmph.

What he failed to mention was that mod wheel 2 (the one on the far right) was fucked. No matter what position it was set to, you got fully lit LEDs and no change whatsoever, period. A quick visit to the calibration mode showed that the wheel was giving the same reading regardless of position (it was reading as fully open). Gee thanks for leaving that out, SO helpful.

The seller also conveniently forgot the mention that the pitch bender wheel had been disabled in the settings menu, so it looked like the bender was being read properly as the LEDs would light up and dim as per normal operation, but no bending was actually taking place. After a good amount of time menu-diving, I finally found the setting and was like What The Flying Japanese Fuck? WHO DISABLES THE FUCKING BENDER?!?!? Aaaargh.

Then I decided to open it up and see what there was to see. In the process, I managed to slip in my haste and as a result yanked a flex ribbon cable out of its socket, tearing off one of the little metal lines. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

18-pin flex cable. Yay. With broken off leggyweg. Fuck. Never done that before. Never fixed one of those before either. Ok calm down asshat, let’s see what we can google up here about this. Ok ok ok some guy has managed to repair one of these. Right. So you gotta secure the end of the cable, carefully cut across the top side of the cable with a sharp ass knife (XACTO with a fresh blade to the rescue), then peel back the plastic top coat, then super carefully scrape away the insulation, exposing more of the ‘wires’ (they’re more like little metal strips than wires though). Half an hour of super stressful, super careful work later, and all was proceeding well. I then bent the old legs back under the ribbon, and taped them down very carefully, making sure none were touching each other. Considering the pitch on the cable is 1mm, these fuckers were really goddam close to each other. Then I taped the hard plastic thingy back on using two-sided tape, and jimmied the bastard back into the socket:

It’s still poking out a bit much in that photo, and afterwards I fiddled with the thing until it was back in place properly. After letting out a huge sigh, I carefully put the synth back together, plugged it in, and took a quick step back after flipping the power switch, hoping for the best but not wanting to be asphyxiated by a sudden cloud of smoke or electrocuted by angry arcs of ZAP. In the end, I needn’t have worried, as it worked fine and has ever since:

Lesson to be learned: BE CAREFUL, GODDAMMIT!

I still need to order a replacement knob for the one that melted. Looks like someone may have had a lit cigarette in their hand when they were having a go at editing sounds. No idea really, but it is odd that only one of the near-thirty knobs on the synth was melted. Next on the agenda is replacing the tact switches under the buttons that don’t respond well. Just out of curiosity I looked on Syntaur and saw they want $1.95 a piece for tact switches for the ION. Damn does that include a free consultation to the local proctologist considering the brutal ass-raping that’s going on with that sort of pricing? Fucking hell. Mouser sells them for 23 fucking cents a piece!!! What the hell, Syntaur? Cunt. Even so, I’ll probably have no choice but to take it up the rear a bit sourcing a knob. Aaaaaargh.

Next was dealing with the mod wheel. Busted out the multimeter, removed all three wheel assemblies and disconnected the cable, then tested away. What the hell, they all checked out fine?! Aaaaaaaaargh. Maybe it was a loose cable or some weird corrosion on the connector. I cycled the connector a dozen or so times, plug in, unplug, plug in, unplug, etc. put everything back together again and waddaya know it Fuh King Works. YES!

After all the hoohaa, I sat down and spent a good hour just going through the preset sounds, both playing and editing/tweaking. Hmmm. This is actually the second time I’ve had an ION, and I can’t recall why I decided to sell the first one I had. This is a deep synth. Very impressive. Easily right up there with the Virus, Q and Blofeld as far as awesome VA synths go. No wavetables, so there’s a bit of a minus where that’s concerned, but still… very good synth. The presets are really hit or miss though. Some really awful stuff in there but also some really good stuff too. Having almost one knob per function makes editing a breeze, obviously, but there are still some things you have to go menu diving to take care of, with the matrix modulation being one of them. If it had a hold button it would be stellar for droney, weirdo, outer space shit. A handful of the User Bank sounds seems to have been corrupted, as the names are all garbled bits of characters and random shapes (nothing from the supported character list anyway). A few are really fucking interesting. Most just don’t produce any sound at all. I’m not sure if there’s a randomizer function or not. Neat shit though.

The other fixer-upper that followed me home (from the auction of course) was this guy:

Looks like there’s nothing wrong, huh? The LCD tends to display garbage for a bit after first powering the unit on, but one press of the pattern button and it’s ok. Strange. I opened it up and didn’t find anything really out of the ordinary, though the display itself is exhibiting rather more play than I’d expect for something that is actually soldered down to the main PCB. Having said that though, it’s just the 14-pin (or whatever it was) header that’s soldered, on the left side of the display. The right side just floats above the PCB, not secured at all. There are tabs on the underside of the display PCB that secure the LCD device itself down, and I’m wondering if those aren’t causing a minor short or something seeing as it looks like they do come into contact with the main PCB. Loads of surface mount stuff. Anyway, three of the four encoders are shot as well. The one on the far left is a clickable encoder, and it is the only one that works perfectly. The others are standard encoders, and they are all jumpy as hell. I could desolder them and give them a once over like I did with the encoders on the Nova and K-station and so on, but honestly I’d rather just solder in new ones and be done with it. I’m not sure about a part number though, as there was no lettering or any markings at all on the encoders themselves, so I emailed MFB and hopefully they’ll be kind enough to provide me with a part number or at least info as to what kind of encoder will work. Fingers crossed…

This is a neat little beat box. Pretty obviously inspired by the TR-909. No rimshot or claps though, so some people may be really put off by that. One neat thing is that you can edit the sounds and store different drum kits, and it remembers which kit was used for which pattern and recalls them instantly on the fly. Very cool. Having separate outs for the Kick and Snare is nice, as well as a stereo out for everything else, from which the signal for Kick and Snare gets removed if you use their individual outputs. Wish the Boutique TRs offered this. Hehehe.

Time to go! Adios.

[silentpeople]

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[silentpeople]

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[silentpeople]

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[silentpeople]

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