Some months ago I picked up an Alesis Micron to prepare for an upcoming live gig. I first fell in love with the looks and the features closed the deal. Also they come at a bargain price now, i got mine for really cheap. It is a successor of the Alesis ION and while its a super-portable version, without the IONs hands-on knobs, it adds a very cool argpeggio and sequencer part, as well as built-in effects.
Much to my dismay it only took two weeks before it got in trouble. An 1/4″ audio-cable lost the tip of its connector inside one of the audio-out jacks. Horror! It has never happened to me before, but i learned my lesson: Don’t use cheap cables and adapters! Not only was one of the outputs unuseable, but the piece of metal stuck inside also distorted the sound coming out from the headphone jack. Disaster.
This weekend I finally took the time to open the Micron up to see how the plug was constructed internally, just to check if this was something i could take care of myself.
The construction is very rugged and tour-ready, its built like a tank with recessed keys and everything. It turns out that the same goes for field servicing. Opening it up is a very straightforward affair:
How to safely open the Alesis Micron:
- Unscrew the caps for the audio-jacks on the rear of the unit.
- Flip the unit over
- Loosen the screws around the perimeter of the unit, leave the recessed screws near the center alone, they keep the keyboard in place.
- Flip the unit over again and place the unit with the front towards you, carefully, you can now lift away the entire cover of the synth by first easing it away from the audio-jacks in the rear and the keyboard edge at the front. The bottom-plate that you just unscrewed will stay in place thanks to the weight of the keyboard that is attached to it.
- Lift the lid CAREFULLY as there is a ribbon connector that you need to unplug to avoid damaging its short cable. Its in the top-right corner and powers the lcd-screen.
- Thats all. Easy!
I was surprised at the old-school design with one chip per voice, seen in one of the images below. The plug turned out to be easy to open by the way, and my Micron is back in action, below you can see it in the hands of my trusty assistant Simon.
