Faulty Microverb, any ideas?

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jazzlemmingjazzlemming Frets: 36
Hi guys, I got an old Alesis Microverb a while ago and I've never really had it working properly.

The "signal"/peak light comes on a second after powering up and then stays on, regardless of settings or whether there is anything plugged in. It makes ugly, glitchy white noise, basically. The input control works fine and I can get a strong (almost) unaffected guitar tone with the mix set to zero. The mix and output controls just make the noise louder or quieter.  The adjust knob works to some extent, for example when it's in the flange setting, you can hear the effect getting faster or slower but still just with noise.

Does anyone know what the problem might be? Or should I send it to someone to look at or just flog it for parts?
Any advice appreciated, thanks.
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Comments

  • Not trying to be facetious, but have you tried turning it off and on again? The reason I ask is that some of the older Lexicon reverbs (Alex and Reflex for sure) can exhibit a similar issue which goes away if you power down and then on again.
    My wife asked me to stop singing Wonderwall.
    I said maybe.....
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  • Ha ha, yeah, within a second the light comes on and stays on. Thanks, though.
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  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10356
    I've seen a few faults on different units. Some of them had a strange DC connector which generally got lost and people bodged other supplies up leading to damage, other faults were bad joints on ribbon cables, bad contact between DIL socket and EEPROM ect, 

    I don't know what your skill level at electronic repair is so excuse me if I'm teaching you to suck eggs but I would first check input DC \ AC volts (AC or DC depending on unit ) then check every cable joint and any chip to socket joint ... then if still no good then check for bad joints on PCB ........ generally these things are fixable but can be time consuming to do so and in general they aren't worth a lot. 


    www.2020studios.co.uk 
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  • It's got the original Alesis 9v AC psu afaik. I'm not very experienced outside of guitar wiring, but I've got a multimeter and a soldering iron so I guess I can use this to cut my teeth on! Thanks for the advice :)
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  • Sorry for the resurrection, but for anyone with a similar problem, it turned out to be just one power capacitor (the big one) that needed replacing. All good now!
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  • ICBMICBM Frets: 71956
    This is the most common fault on old gear of this sort of age now. It’s not a cure-all, but given the cost of the caps and the usually fairly easy job to replace them it’s always worth trying.

    "Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski

    "Just because I don't care, doesn't mean I don't understand." - Homer Simpson

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