Every year, I like to get rid of musical gear and make way for something new that I will use. I suppose that happens to all of us, no matter what our craft. Unless we’re hoarders.

Recently, an Alesis Ion came across my path for cheap, and I jumped at the chance.  Like most synthesizers in this day and age, you will commonly find people wanting to get rid of them for no other reason than they weren’t able to program them to do their bidding, and/or they felt the interface was evil, and/or they hated the presets.  When cheap, these situations pair me up with random synthesizers.  This one was no different.   I am not stumped easily by synth technology, especially when such wonderful treasures lay hidden and undiscovered.

This isn’t a review, just a few quick Internet tips for those wanting to know, and to state that the Alesis Ion is a force to behold.  Though now replaced by the Alesis Micron and Akai MiniAK, nothing beats the full-front control of the Ion.  All of them sound great, and are a synth programmer’s fun park.

Instantly I realized the flaws of the Ion were in physical engineering, rather than actual design.  They used cheap data encoder potentiometers all over the place.  The worst of which lie at the heart of controlling the Alesis Ion, which are the pitch bend and mod wheels.  The other problem are the data encoders on the front.  Numerous complaints abound about them skipping values and plain quitting.  Luckily, Alesis/Numark (Phone 401- 658-3131 ext 1407 Hours: M-F 9:00am – 5:30pm EST) still has a few parts.  Mine will be arriving shortly.

No sooner did I play around with my new toy did I discover a horrid, high-pitched squeak coming from the M2 wheel, and a few inches to the left, the pitch bender was acting a fool and cutting on and off randomly.   Being someone who usually goes full-octave pitch bend to the power of 12, this wasn’t good.

Apart the Ion came.  Modest PCBs stared at me blankly, as the undersides meet your first glance among a few ribbon cables of varying nature.   I had to be careful here, the slack of these cables is barely enough to hold propped open at 90′ degrees let alone both halves laying flat.  There were the mod wheels and pitch wheel–not wheels at all, but half a wheel, I suppose.  I couldn’t help but notice the weird, imprecise and wonky physical design the “wheels,” employed.   Sitting in its very own metal housing that then attaches to the frame, it’s merely a trim pot with a spring (kind of like a clothespin spring) and a plastic tab attached to the pitch wheel moving within the confines the movement between the spring’s ends.  The problem was, there was also a metal tab that sandwiched just under the plastic tab of the pitch wheel, made from the same frame I mentioned just above.  This was designed as the spring stop.   Since the plastic tab was ever so slightly larger than the metal tab it sat atop, the spring would allow for subtle movement of the pitch bend wheel, thus, inadvertently triggering the potentiometer ever-so-slightly with little effort.  Shaving this plastic tab little by little, I managed to get it to match the metal tab exactly, and there was no more false movement.  Thus, no more triggering.   Awesome.

Typically, the Ion calibrates all the controls when it is switched on.  Just in case that fails, you can also recalibrate the pitch wheel and the mod wheels, I discovered, but no one told you how to do it.  This does:   Ion (Q01) Schematics, go to page 18.

Lastly, how do I deal with this infernal squeak?  Much like the pitch wheel, the M1 and M2 modulation wheels are mounted identically, using identical wheels and identical metal housings that attach to the frame.  The only difference is the type of potentiometers used.  I tried using a little graphite powder lubricant at the base of where the potentiometer meets the threads to secure it to the housing, and then a lot more, neither of which did the trick.  Out came the WD-40.   Just a small, tiny drop, because we all know better than to just spray chemicals around willy-nilly, don’t we?   Well, yeah, WD-40 did the trick, but it also loosened up the M2 wheel so much, it would flop around as if it had been tweaked and rocked-out for 20 years.   Oops.  Obviously there’s some much heavier grease or something in there that the WD-40 defeated.  I mean, it still works, but if I have the Ion on a top tier keyboard stand at an angle, that mod wheel ain’t staying where I want it.   Dammit.  So yeah, don’t do that.   The only reason why I went this direction was because it didn’t sound like an electrical component problem, it was like a tiny, squeaky door hinge:  i.e., mechanical.

For the reasons above, I suggest highly against using any cleaner/lubricants, even DeoxIt, on the Alesis Ion’s parts.  I’m hesitant to suggest an alternative, but hey, post a comment here if you have one!  Wisdom is best used when shared.

(image courtesy Sweetwater/Alesis-Numark)