[A6] hardware mods

[David Evans]

On Sat, May 10, 2003 at 08:43:45AM -0400, Chris Pickett wrote:
> 
> Were there ever any hardware differences between early A6's and the 
> later ones?

  I don't believe so.

> I think I read that the first 5 betas with the grey front 
> panel needed upgrading, but what about later units?

  The early beta ones had an earlier stepping of the ASICs (and
possibly attendant voice board revisions...not sure about that) but I
think that's it.  AFAIK, the rest are all the same.

> The guy at the 
> music store, who said Alesis told him the A6 needed tuning every couple 
> of years (perhaps recalibration as Tom mentioned for some of his knobs, 
> who knows), also said that earlier versions had either faulty ROM's or 
> ROM's that were later upgraded.

  He's likely just talking about the OS, that you can upgrade over MIDI.

> This sounds like he's trying to get me 
> to buy a new one at the price of $4000 CDN, but I just want to make sure.
> 

  It sounds like this guy is just looking for excuses to get you to drop money
at his store.  I'm sure that his shop would be happy to do that "yearly
tuning"...for a price.

-- 
David Evans          (NeXTMail/MIME OK)             dfevans at bbcr.uwaterloo.ca
Ph.D. Candidate, Computer/Synth Junkie     http://bbcr.uwaterloo.ca/~dfevans/
University of Waterloo         "Default is the value selected by the composer
Ontario, Canada           overridden by your command." - Roland TR-707 Manual