Bad Gear - Alesis Micron - The Brick 

Without this show I woudn't know it's friday 😅

This synth was absolutely essential when I was getting started in cover bands. Nothing close to its price point was similarly polyphonic and multi-timbral, and you 100% need that when the songs you're reproducing live have multiple keyboard parts and you're a single human being. At $300, the Micron was punching WAY above its weight.

Deep down in my heart I knew one day the Micron would be covered on this series. I've always wanted one since I saw one at guitar center but now it is my mission. Thanks for reminding me.

I love my Micron. The magic happens when you start stacking patches and using the multi-timbrality (is that a word?) I like the minimal control knobs to keep things simple. This synth is really a Swiss Army Knife. The drums are really Booooomy!

That's the best review of the micron I've seen and now I want one....so thanks for that. I am literally sleeping in my studio. A bed in the middle of a million synths. I have bin bags full of cables for pillows and you keep doing this me. Co-dependency is an ugly thing. Stop now 🧡

this is actually one of best VA synths ever made.. i hope one day will be lucky to get one

The Micron actually got a better and more expansive effects section than the Ion. Thus Ion patches are fully compatible to the Micron - but Micron patches are not fully compatible with the Ion1 Also - at 1:15 you say it has a plastic enclosure. I don't know if they sold you cheaper versions down in Austrialand - but my pristine, Norwegian bought Micron definitely got an aerospace grade aluminum enclosure (same alu the use for drink cans in the aerospace cantina). Also - many say this thing is ugly. I think it is one of the most unique and iconic looking pieces of keyboard created!

I had one of these. My first proper synth. The encoder broke, and I put it in for repair. The repair place told me a bunch of excuses why they coudn't fix it, such as being unable to get the parts... etc. So I sourced the parts. They then made other excuse about other things. Six months went by and in that time I learned to solder and picked it up from them to do the work myself. They were so angry and put out at me effectively calling their bluff on how long the repair had taken that they refused to accept any payment for the work they had already done, told me that they weren't running a charity, and that was the end of my relationship with them.

Future Idea: Casio VL-1: It's not even a synth, it's an actual calculator that happens to make noise. No MIDI or external trigger support. And one band that found success with it had the monkey paw curl because everyone knows them as a one-hit-wonder instead of realizing what a landmark minimalist release their first album was. It's also cheap in the used market because it's a child's toy. Plus, I really want to see what kind of Jam you can get out of it :) The VL-1 might be a prime example of gear that's actually Bad, but also hugely successful/important because good musicians got legitimate songs out of it. Thinking about it, the VL-1 might've been the Volca of its day :P

Had one years ago - pawned to survive. Finally found another to my liking 10 years later and it is still one of my favorite instruments to play around with.

I’ve been waiting for this one and man, you did not disappoint! Still have it, even performed surgery on it to keep it alive (push encoder replaced OOPS!!), it still makes sounds none of my other synths can, crazy!

I never realized that the micron had such a powerful synth engine. Pretty cool stuff for such an unassuming package.

This series is great! Thanks for your hard work 🤟

I bought it's bigger brother Alesis Ion back in 2003. It is one of the few synths that I have hung onto all these years. The ION was fabulous at the time, as there were no modern analog synthesizers on the market for the most part, so this virtual analog worked well for me. Love it

There was a pad that you chose that was awesome. I didn't know this (or his bigger brother) existed. I'm definitely going to look a little more into this one. Nice. I have no idea how you create so much content in such a short period of time, but I'm certainly glad you do.

Your songs are always awesome, but really was grooving to those tracks you made for this episode.

Jexus' patches for the Ion made me fall in love in this synth engine. Great episode!

Never heard of this beast, but it seems I only ever really knew Alesis for their drum machines… it’s amazing what a synth engine lurks beneath its Lego exterior! It kinda makes my “brain dance”!

Just the mood my Friday afternoon needed. Thank you for the joy, as always!

The Lego Synth! Whatever you do Don't step on it as your making your way into the morning light :D

The moment you realize AudioPilz is doing episodes about all of your studio gear is priceless....Or maybe I'm a fanboy! Either way...It is Bad Gear Friday!!!Great episode sir!

Jexus' video on the Ion has made me want one of these for so long. It can do so much.

Oh man this makes me miss my Ion, what an awesome synth that was. I absolutely loved how it displayed the waveforms on the screen, thought it was revolutionary back then. Modulation routings were insane… Enough trips down memory lane, loving the jams as usual, great stuff!

Awesome! I just bought the blue one last week. Love this thing.

I got a Micron when it was new to go with my MicroKorg and still have it - a great little synth with a big brain inside - you made some nice jams with it one thing you didn't show was the very capable jam mode where the keyboard is split into different sections and you can make simple songs with it in one pass - very unique feature I got an Ion a few years ago and it is a lot of fun but sturdy/heavy for its size also it suffers the screen angle thing of the Akai Force where you have to stand over it to get the right viewing angle or prop in at an angle in some sort of stand or wedge also being multi-timbral is a pretty rare thing now except for dedicated chunky workstations, so that also made this guy special especially due to all those features and the small size - the only thing comparable now is the venerable and even more portable/lighterJD-Xi I wish more synths had multi-timbral options - the Hydrasynth had to make a large deluxe model before it could even be bi-timbral :-( portable mutli-timbral and/or multitrack synths are a boon to creativity, portability, and jams that don't need you to take the damn computer everywhere you go - more stuff like this should come out now in this fairly jam centric period of music

I had one of these when I was a little kid! My dad got it for me after he got his Ion (which he still uses all the time). They really are capable of some wild sounds.

Insta-subbed because if this Micron is bad gear I would love to see you portrait good gear. This brick seems legit man!

I’ve had one of these in my closet for years and you inspired me to play around with it again.

Love mine and still working after 20 years and many hundreds of gigs. Most used patch Philly Turbo Organ, nothing else can produce that sound, magic.

Florian, you've done it this time! The prices for Microns just went up twofold at the time of your video release. I'm a "lucky man" because I have one! You've turned the bad gear market upside down! Thank you!!!

Damn I love this show. It's the only way I know the weekend has arrived when I see it in my playlist. I love the jam packed memes and the whole philosophy of, you can make interesting music on ANY piece of hardware. May I please request that you keep an eye on how long you flash an image up for, it doesn't happen very often, but sometimes they only flash up for a couple of frames and I have to skip back to see what I missed. Keep up the awesome content 👍

The ion was my first synth, and the micron was a great compact version with some extra sequencing and patch per key capability… I got a lot of miles out of it and I am happy to see such thorough review, thanks!

These have been bought and sold from my inventory so many times I forget. I even had the Blue limited bought for $150. Sometimes I'd get one with scratchy volume and or sliders and found that gunk remover solved those issues easily. I really like these for what they are VA synths. Many of the patches sound analogish. I've had an Ion and sold that for rent. So now I have a mint Miniac with mic. Maybe not as collectable as a Blue limited but with some extras like a third wheel and knobs it's good compromise between an Ion and Micron. Alesis use to be the poor person brand, I've been loyal until Numark gobbled them up. Great Vid!

The demo sounds really good 😎

awesome !!! I was thinking of this synth in the week and I said I never seen it in bad gear show !!! wish fulfilled :) thanks !

Damn, now you have me looking for the Micron and the Ion. I found them and I might just have to buy them. Great video as always. 👍👍👍👍👍

Love this content! Since you've had gear like the DX7 on the channel, ever thought about doing the tr707? People rag on it compared to its analog siblings a little. (also its humbling/inspiring seeing you make jams with gear I own)

Another great episode of Really-Not-Bad-At-All Gear! ;)

Congratulations! That little allusion to the Beat Thang just made my day.

Aaaw! You made me dig out my lovely Miniak again. I love it!

Great episode as allways! Suggestion. I once had a Crumar Bit99. It was big and bulky and you had to punch the keys real hard to edit anything. And yeah, it was an analog synth without knobs. Pretty much used it as a midi keyboard only

All of the inserted memes are spot on for the emotions one feels when using a Micron.

Sold mine a few months ago. This GOOD gear review makes me want it back now :D

beautiful sound, wow

The Ion VA is up there with the An1X as one of the best sounding DSP synths of that era . Ended up with the Akai Miniak years later as the keys felt better to me and the two mod wheels where nice . Kinda of regret letting it go sometimes , but reluctant to pick up another as the outputs are prone to go bad ( on it and the micron ) and as it’s an attractive synth for newbies the encoders get beat to hell often . Still may one day . It had pretty decent “drift “ and a healthy selection of filter dsp clones( 15/17? ) that where at least 80% of the way there in isolation. So it’s a great cheap Polly for that Mid 00s VA sound and decent enough analog emulation in a mix .

Alesis have a special place in music for me, had DM4 and DM5 Drum Module in the 90s, many cool sounds for little money.

Another great show…music visuals content are always fantastic

5:11 thank you for this nightmare fuel - i knew i dont need sleep this week :D But in all seriousness - another great episode

I laughed out loud at the brief Barney clip (Smooooth...)! Today, about half of Microns are still working and the other half are either parts donors, or have been recycled. When InMusic bought out Alesis they dropped support for their entire line of synths, including this one. Saying all this, it does sound good.

Not sure if it's still on RU-vid, but there was a video of Dorian Concept using a Micron like a boss. It can sound amazing (that's why i got a Ion), but the menu diving is endless and the rubber of the rotary knobs decays often, leaving your knob very sticky...

So I've been watching every episode of Bad Gear on a loop for two days, and Idk how I missed this episode, but I LOVE THIS THING. 😅 I'd usually prefer to have as many features all laid out in front of me instead of hidden in endless menus, I love how small it seems to be. Hope I can find one eventually. 😓👍

I wanted an Ion back in the day. I ended up settling on this since it was readily available at the time. Not easy to program unless you spend time menu diving. The software editors is what made it bearable. Glad to see it on Bad Gear. Thanks

My first hardware synth, a great one to learn on. May have been a little glitchy and shoddy but damn that Jupiter filter and 3 osc FM can sound very digital-warm, and you can also get extremely circuit bent glitch noises by doing stuff with hard sync. I even made a completely convincing reverb piano based on a YT guys patch that he emailed the basic settings to me… Also this is the only synth that I actually had to turn off because the sounds it was making scared the hell out of me-it literally sounded like people screaming in hell lol If you’re into menu diving on crappy presets in order to turn them into mind melting idm type stuff it’s awesome. Def would consider a groovebox or plug-in version - already got a miniak and been looking at the MPC5000 which has a ported over ion engine

Dude you did surprise me with this! I've always wanted a Micron since I first saw it. I know I know, the interface is terrible, but since there is the dedicated software... I mean it sounds really great, and lots of people who actually had/have Micron say that it's one of the greatest VA synths of all time. Sounds really good. But as usual - great job on the episode 😘

There's A World Of Menu Diving Through A Tiny Window With This Complicated Machine But Well Worth The Effort In The End I Think Because It' Really Is A Decent Little Synth . I Will Keep Mine Forever . Thanks For Another Amazing Bad Gear Episode .

YESS been waiting for this episode for 17 years!!

2 interesting facts about the micron 1) when the red edition came out it only had 4 note polyphony, they didn't add 8 note polyphony till the blue edition. You had to update the red version over the web to get it. 2) you could run audio sources through it and use it as an effects unit and stack as many effects you wanted into the arranger. You could use more than 8 effects at a time. I own the blue version its quite amazing , its a great synth and i wish they would re release the micron, ion and andromeda

Had an Akai MiniAk when I needed something fairly portable. On its own it sounded great, but next to better synths it just couldn't quite cut it. Also, the MiniAk was a mystery I couldn't be bothered to unravel. I would totally have one as my first/only synth though and I can see why so many non-synth bands at the time had one as their only synth.

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with the Micron ever since I bought mine brand new at Guitar Center. But I’ve been making music with it for years,so I guess I love it a bit more than I hate it! You nailed the conundrum of the synth perfectly in this video: so many great features, but such a limiting interface.

Im Prinzip gute ich auf der Suche nach alten Synth unbewusst deine ganzen Video. Absolute Legende biste!!!!

I don’t even know most of the bad gear anymore, but I’m still here for the synth memes.

It sounds like you're rewriting the soundtrack for binding of Isaac with this one! Lots of interesting, dark sounds.

You remind me why i still want one. Those circles of buttons look soo good

Some f'ing JAMS in this episode. Well done, sir.

Dorian concept does a badass solo on this micron in a RU-vid video he made years ago...I bought one immediately after seeing that haha

I feel like synthwave with Lego movie footage could be a genre of RU-vid videos. L E G O W A V E

I never saw this coming Arturia micron??? Sounds big and meaty for a bad gear, haha, u nail every gear you get, thanx again for an entetaining video.

The Finale was magnificent, very moody track, with an interesting harmony. Very expressive!

Has anyone noticed that it is a left handed synthesizer? Everything important like the screen is on the right side of the device. Thats kind of cool! Impressive sound for a little thing like this.

Uncanny valley braindance is my new favorite genre.

Did Not knew this one. Sounds amazingly and as always so funny but profound presented.

pro tip.when you put a monster truck hot wheel on those faders and pull it back, you get 5 secs of fader automation which is enough for a solo, which means you can play a two hand solo, which makes you a synthgod.

this synth is actually built very robustly. Good for gigging.

Ого! Анимацию с советским застольем никак не ожидал увидеть на этом канале! :)

Thanks ! I'm a big old Alesis fan, have a midiverb 1, midiverb 2, midiverb 4, and a 3632 compressor, didn't even knew they had synthesizer ! Not sure I want to buy yet another gear after watching one of your video tho :D Have a nice weekend, great episode !!

Nice! The Micron sounds amazing, and is a very "happy accident" kind of synth. Aside from the Blofeld, this may be the least bad gear covered so far on Bad Gear. :)

I love my micron. Alesis did a great job of implementing FM and dual filters in a VA :) And on a broader note, I dream of the Ion having a baby with the MS-2000. It could challenge the AN1x for the best budget VA ever title, and win my heart with ease. Just imagine the Ion's FM and dual filters with the MS-2k's DWGS, fx section and 16-step knobby seq.... mmmmmm-hmmm! :)

The interface seems like a nightmare but, honestly, that's a great sounding little synth. I think with one of the software editors you could be on to a bit of a winner there. EDIT: Also, dammit: I wish I'd seen this an hour ago. Somebody else clearly had the same idea as I did after seeing this video and immediately went onto eBay to see if they could snag themselves an Alesis Ion at a bargain price, and they *absolutely succeeded*. Google was still listing one on eBay for £220 and free delivery, but when I got there it was already gone (for £220!). Like I say, missed it by an hour: somebody grabbed themselves a great bit of kit there. Next one up, in "OK" condition is £400, which doesn't really sell it for me.

This was the best like & subscribe pitch in the whole life of youtube. Respect!

Omg… I have one of these!! A long long time ago (like round 2011) I let my friend borrow this for a show, well some way or another it got water thrown on it, wouldn’t make noise or stay on. Fast forward to 2021, I dig it out of the corner of my closet, and find a compatible screen adapter, turn it on, and WHAM, it works and has all the old patches I made on it!!!

Ah yes the Micron. I have no idea what they were thinking of making a synth where you have just ONE rotating & Click knob for the entire sound design function and menu diving..... And even when Akai re-released this thing as the Miniak, it wasn't changed :(

My first real synth. The problem with these units are the encoders. I feel like this is just Alesis’ r3

I still have mine and love it! The only thing I don't like about it is that it made things a little awkward once. It was early on not long after i bought it...Coworker, in front of many coworkers: "It's Friday, and I'm going to a movie tonight! What are you doing, Jeff?" Me: "I'm staying home and playing with my Micron!" It took a long time before things got back to normal at work for me after that...

I always wanted one of those! Still sounding great today for me

The reason the Micron has so much functionality is simply because the Ion and Micron have the exact same synth engine. The only difference between them is the amount of controls and keys. If you want more functionality, you should update your Micron to the latest firmware, so it has 8 voices and 8 parts, just like the Micron SE.

I'm surprised that the Micron is on here because it has a deep synth engine with good sound. It's hard to program but it's compact with good build quality. The reason why they are usually trashed on eBay is because they were so cheap that people would get them and treat them like garbage. Give it to their children, let them hammer on it and throw it around, drop it on the floor, throw it in the closet or whatever.

There was a time in 2003 when I had a whole room worth of gear. Then only VSTs in 2005. Then only three hardware synths, the most pain-in-the-butt interfaced ones: a pair of Nord micromodulars and an Alesis Micron. Both, with a software editor and a very old version of Cubase had me making two full length albums. It was the best hardware configuration I ever had. And their colors matched perfectly. Deep thanks for reminding me of that pre-children era when I had time to make music.

Being an Ion owner since 2004, I can attest to it's complex internal structures and have created some monster patches. The Micron isn't a baby brother but more a 3rd cousin twice removed in it's inability to be user friendly. BTW, Ions are going for twice what I paid for mine back then, if you can find one. Great episode Florian !

Can confirm that the Miniak is a repackaged twin, got one after reading about it having a more robust build quality and it has 3 mod wheels like the Ion instead of 1: paired with Patchbase on the iPad this engine becomes POWERFUL, like to the point where it tempered my gear acquisition syndrome and successfully made me lose the itch because of just how capable and versatile it really is.

As an Ion owner the physical interface on both Micron & Miniak makes me feel sick.. okay Hannah Montana might not have one.. but there's room on the panel for a Hannah Montana sticker!

I was so bummed you didn’t release an episode yesterday. Then I realized it was Thursday. Then I was bummed that I didn’t have a new episode -and- the week wasn’t over.

Nice RTJ clip among the clips-a-plenty jungle. They truly have the backing tracks that keep even the synth-heads content.

Please stop saying all my gear is bad, my feelings are hurt

yoo

Another quality vid!

Thanks.. You just made me bought one just for the cuteness of it😀😀

I just picked up maybe the last Micron available? and really love it. Def got the AU editor since there ain't no way I'm messing with menu diving. Thanks for featuring it.

LETS GOOOOOO THIS IS THE CENTERPIECE OF MY SETUP

Sounds great! Looks like one of those hidden gems.

I love your edits. The coffee maker with Cutoff, Resonance, and PWM buttons no joke made me piss myself a little.