[Scott Dorsey]

In article , Paul wrote:

You can see that the pitch and modulation wheels are touching.

Really lousy design. Yes, I might have to take a blade to it.

This is consumer equipment. The material and manufacture is designed for
a three to five year lifespan.

You'll notice that the contacts are corroding because they aren't hard gold.
Hard gold contacts would drive up the price of the keyboard mechanism by a
factor of ten. So they don't do that.

The knobs are inexpensive urethane that isn't completely set and swells up
after a few years. That saved a dollar or so and really doesn't shorten
the service lifetime since other things will have broken by then.

Now, Alesis DOES provide an actual service manual... even if it does not
have full schematics and board layouts, it at least has block diagrams and
pinouts. So Alesis does get some credit for trying to make the system
serviceable in a way that most consumer gear is not. The days of being able
to order a Sam's Photofact on the latest consumer product are mostly over.

The stuff sold in your local MI store is pretty much all designed like
other consumer electronics today, and sold in a similar way.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."