Just snagged an Alesis Ion off the feeBay, looking forward to adding it to my rig

[Caligvla]

No, he didn't ...

[Miket156]

by Conbrio: I've always liked the Ion as well, but one thing though--it's a great synth for leads, sound effects and such, but I've never heard a really warm and fat pad sound come from one.

 

 

Actually, the ION does some pretty good pads. I use to own a couple of Oberheim's back in the old days, and I still have my Prophet 5, so I have a good idea of what Oberheim warm and fat pads sounded like. There is one or two factory Oberheim like Pad patches on the Ion, and the tone of those patches do sound like an Oberheim. One thing you have to keep in mind is that any VA from the time period the ION was made are not as fat and juicy as the old analogs were. A friend of mind owned an Oberheim 8 voice modular synth, which was made before the OBX and OBXa series were introduced. That synth would literally shake the walls and vibrate glasses and coffee cups off the table in our practice room. So it could be a bit overwhelming when it came to FAT.

 

Now, the ION won't quite do that, but you can get very respectable PADS from the ION. I bought the ION to use for my classic rock show that called for some of the vintage analog synth sounds I got out of my Oberheims and Prophet 5 back in the old days. I won't take any of my vintage keyboards out of my house, so the ION is the ticket.

 

I get great lead sounds out of it, although the filter sweeps are not quite as dramatic as the filter on my Prophet 5. However, how often do you really need to do that? Nice bass sounds too. Sounds effects are a lot of fun on the ION when you have time to play around with it.

 

The User Interface is quite ingenious; at times I wished some of my old analog synths had a screen and the ION user interface. No guess-work.

 

I bought mine brand new and I have it over 6 years. I never had any problems with my ION, it has served me well. There's not a scratch on it.

 

Chip, I'd say you got a steal on a fine synth. Enjoy!

 

 

Cheers,

 

 

Mike T.

[Conbrio]

 

Actually, the ION does some pretty good pads. I use to own a couple of Oberheim's back in the old days, and I still have my Prophet 5, so I have a good idea of what Oberheim warm and fat pads sounded like. There is one or two factory Oberheim like Pad patches on the Ion, and the tone of those patches do sound like an Oberheim. One thing you have to keep in mind is that any VA from the time period the ION was made are not as fat and juicy as the old analogs were.

 

 

I was basing my comments on the presets, Mike. I'd love to hear some rich Oberheim or Jupiter-8 string pads coming from an Ion.

 

A friend of mine has an Ion but I've never really had time to do any tweaking with it.

[Miket156]

by Conbrio: I was basing my comments on the presets, Mike. I'd love to hear some rich Oberheim or Jupiter-8 string pads coming from an Ion.

 

 

I kinda figured that out. IIRC, theres a PAD patch called OBIE (or something like that) that has a PAD sound that reminds me of Oberheim PADS. If you do some menu diving and check out the filter types it uses, as well as the rest of the setup, it can be edited to your taste. The ION is a VA so its going to be thinner sounding that an Oberheim, so I connected a Roland CE-1 Chorus to it and a very small amount of ROOM reverb in my rack, and it helped enhance the edited patch. When playing homogeneous pads, it worked out better than I expected.

 

 

Cheers,

 

 

Mike T.

[Conbrio]

The ION is a VA so its going to be thinner sounding that an Oberheim, so I connected a Roland CE-1 Chorus to it and a very small amount of ROOM reverb in my rack, and it helped enhance the edited patch. When playing homogeneous pads, it worked out better than I expected.

Yes, Ion patches desperately need outboard assistance. Alesis was extremely remiss in not including decent chorus and reverb effects in the Ion.