The Midiverb was probably the first affordable stereo reverb from the mid eighties with its strange box-shape. It's a 64 preset device (no edit) that can simulate variety of room sizes from very small tight-sounding 'toilet flush bathrooms' to huge open 'concert halls' to xenomorphic ethereal voice of God; It contains also famous "gated" sounds, reverse trick It features very simple increase or decrease (also by Midi, but nothing else) and a Bypass. Behind a simple Balance signal wet-dry and (my god) RCA cinch I-O.
Got this from a nice chap from Catania (Sicily) for nice price. The seller specified the machine needed to be "cleaned" but should be working. I just inquired about the weird Alesis 3-pin connectors PSU with 9V - GND - 9V AC-AC which was included.
The package finally arrived in a shoe box (a box in a box it's a "mise en abîme"). The push buttons did not work and the PSU connector made false contact. Also left alphanumeric display was partially working missing segments.
UPPER: just five screws and you have access to the whole guts. Very clear design with lot of "74" logics, an AM6012 12-bit multiplying Digital-to-Analog converter, Am2504 Successive-approximation ADC, intel 8031 CPU, and 2 eproms with firmware and DSP code for algorithm.
Main specs are: 80dB dynamic range- 10kHz bandwidth.
UPPER: The first thing was the connector wobbling with that strange molex 3 pins. No wonder, the joints were completely gone. A quick reflow and perfect!
UPPER Disgusting pads were making no contacts at all even jumping on them with an elephant. Such residue and filth were just gazing at me, gazing and gazing. Very long cleaning with qtipe. A quick glance at pad resistance Ohm - should be ok
UPPER The leftmost numeric display module was missing some segments. No wonder, once desoldered, the module had several broken pins, probably a bad impact from a Ferrari from the eighties with Crockett onboard.
I was not able to repair the original module, broken tracks- Looking into my (vast, chaotic, wunderkammer) component stash, I just found a similar module with exact pin match- Just a little smaller segments, but I don't have really the choice. If It Fits, I Sits!
The board is a double layer, so I little extra heat is needed.
All seems working now , altough the segment is not perfect match but it's ok. I should change also the other one to pair- but guess what? I don't feel like it. I was wondering to make some sound pack with a lot of huge sounds or gated phil collins stuff.
Stay tuned.
Alesis Midiverb USER MANUAL
NO Service MANUAL
Did you know? the successive MIDIFEX machine from Alesis share the same 1:1 hardware just different code for more delay based effects?
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