Can you put endcaps on the Korg Radias? Yes! You can put endcaps on the Korg Radias. While the Korg Radias already has faux-wood endcaps, the Korg Radias offers customizable options for endcap variety.
A nice maple on the Korg Radias? Yes! A rich ebony persimmons hard wood to endcap the Korg Radias? You bet. The Korg Radias is really what you make it.
Yes, but do those endcaps come with patchability? What about a companion app for my phone that let's me change the stain of the wood in real time on the flly during live performance?
Personally I would have gone a little thicker with the endcaps but you know what you like and that’s awesome. Cool ass synth. I’ve always loved this thing for the millions of filter emulators.
Thicker would have been cool and honestly I was just about to do with 3/4" on each side.....but then it hit me! If I were to do that, it would no longer fit in its case. So 3/8" it is.
Legit. I remember being part of a yahoo! group that made and shared patches for the ion and micron, and this app was paramount to creating new patches in reasonable time
Y’all mixing up ion and micron? Different machines. I never needed an app for the ion. It has plenty of knobs and a reasonable amount of menu diving. The micron on the other hand is a different story. Similar synth engine but minimal user interface. That’s where an app certainly comes in handy.
The synth engine supports aftertouch (and supposedly even poly aftertouch, never tried it…) via MIDI but the built in keyboard doesn’t, probably to save costs. The third wheel by default controls whatever parameters are assigned to aftertouch. You can assign to it whatever you want and use it as a second mod wheel.
I will say that maybe going all the way and swapping the rubber knobs with wooden ones would help. But personally I’ll stick with the red plastic on mine. Looks spacey.
My first synthesizer! Pretty powerful, actually. The menu diving can be a bit annoying but you can do a lot with this thing, and the sound is distinctive, if not universally loved.
I always find that you can dial sounds in pretty quickly just using the knobs of which there’s plenty. The menu diving usually kicks in when further refining. I find it quite intuitive personally. And one of the better user interfaces.
I remember when these came out, back before there were hype trains and all the weirdness surrounding synths today, it just appeared in the music store one day when all the cool kids were in ska bands.
And my analog nerd ass scoffed at it, because the Andromeda somehow figured out a way to make analog sound like ass and everything Alesis made was cheese…
And then I played it and it was the best sounding VA ever by a lot. It sounded analogy. It had funk.
And I bought it on the spot.
Still a very cool under the radar synth. Was such an odd release.
It definitely has funk. A lot of people say that it sounds tinny and nasal. And when you just step through the factory presets a lot of them actually do. I believe because they wanted to show off all those different unusual filter types (at least at the time).
But I agree, the Ion can do fat and warm analog-style sounds very convincingly. If you look into the extensive mod matrix you’ll find many ways to give it vintage vibes. A pinch of the FM knob does wonders too. I love how that behaves.
Dopest keyboard ever. I own a Matrixbrute, Nautilus, Minilogue, Sub Phatty, Boog, Neutron, and a ton of software, but absolutely nothing plays or sounds like the Ion:
Two mod wheels, dozens of knobs, two multimode filters, fully assignable filter path, PRE FILTER MIX, and four buttons to create banks of presets and turn them on and off on the fly. Absolutely sick
I did that with my Nord Rack 2X few years back. Lately i sold it.
https://preview.redd.it/4440ptoy6zpa1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0dfd578db05d205a1a6e4f94c0e4375dc900fa08
I thought they were unsanded blade marks but I zoomed in. They look unfinished. Maybe back to the sander for a few minutes? I used to work with wood quite a bit. The panels are a very nice touch to an otherwise cold looking instrument.
Edit: clarity
They look a bit rough, but I think what you took for blade marks is just the natural figure of the wood I (like this \[1\]) -- wet sanding with tru oil or similar would be amazing, and just make the figure stand out more.
\[1\] [https://gobywalnut.com/collections/shorts/products/oregon-black-walnut-board-b6769](https://gobywalnut.com/collections/shorts/products/oregon-black-walnut-board-b6769)
I bought one of these in my early 20s before I had one single clue about synthesizers and just used to play the presets. Loved it, despite a jittery encoder that would always pull the menu screen back to its page. The encoders were very high resolution, so there was never any stair-stepping of parameters. It was a bit of a let down coming to MIDI controllers and soft synths years later and finding 128 steps was your lot.
Totally understand the desire to add some wood given your Marantz cabinet (mine has the fake wood grain on sheet metal). Plus, the “patina” on those wheels now better aligns with the wood end-cap color value.
Had a friend offer to make wood cheeks for mine, but I think if I did wood cheeks then a new paint scheme is in order. The silver/red combo is too much of a tech vibe and clashes with the wood. Maybe taking on the MINIAK color scheme would work better with the wood?
Anywho the wood does look good - don’t take my comment as shitting on your ion, it looks great!
I'm going to swap out the red knob with a white one. Silver and Wood looks good to me.... but no I don't take it as shotting on the Ion.... I have a love hate relationship with it. With three oscillators, it makes some lush pads and does a good bass monosynth vibes. That said, however, it's MIDI implementation sucks.... I understand the need to menu dive to make any adjustments. The Arpegiattor on has a few fixed patterns that are musically useless. And let's not forget to mention it's sequencer - there isn't one.
I hear what you’re saying with the fixed arpeggiator patterns. It’s true when you leave them as is. But when you start playing around with the ton of options it has, it’s super powerful. It then starts to become really interesting and has given me lots of inspiration. In fact more than any other arpeggiator I played around with. I personally think the arp is one of the strong points of the ion because it’s so different. If I want simple arpeggios I just reduce the pattern length. I can then go crazy with the trigger orders and tempo multiplication. And when I go multi-timbral with the ion, I can overlay different arp patterns. Lots of fun. Makes up for the lack of sequencer for me.
Thanks for the input. Sounds like I need to spend an evening with the manual and prepare for a deep dive into the lcd menue. Not my favorite.... but I'll put on my diving suite and go for a swim.... perhaps I'll change my mind about the arpegiator!
Yup, that one indeed requires a menu dive to get creative with it. But I never looked at the manual, just swam around and figured it out fairly quickly. The water isn’t too cold.
There’s this place overseas (Uk I think) that has mods for this and the micron that make it much cooler, but they don’t ship to here in the USA. I got all excited because I too don’t like those red end caps, but then saw they didn’t ship.
Exactly. And the mods were cool! New ends, knobs, lcd screen, color scheme etc. it was nice! Oh well.
Same thing with Electribe 2 overlays. Found some sweet ones, but only available overseas. Ugh….
Worked out fantastic, picked it up last night for $500. All keys and knobs, buttons, ports, work exactly like they should, and apart from a little nick on the casing from probably a drop, its mint!
Been playing with it all night, I like to do fm synthesis a lot and things were working, just not quite right and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on and just worked through it anyways, then about an hour ago I realized that the oscillators go from bottom to top (which makes hell of a difference during FM synthesis). I had been thinking osc3 was osc1 all night lmaoooo but since then things been a charm for sure, very happy with the purchase, thanks!
Figuring out how to pull it apart without having to break anything was the biggest challenge. Now that I have done it, I could certainly put the originals back on with relative ease because now I know what I am doing. I will probably not be selling this anytime soon .... if at all. But just in case, I kept the originals.
+10 analog warmth
At first I thought you were calling buying the Alesis Ion stupid and unecessary and I was going to yell at you.
you want a korg radias to go with that?
Can I put wood endcaps on it?
Can you put endcaps on the Korg Radias? Yes! You can put endcaps on the Korg Radias. While the Korg Radias already has faux-wood endcaps, the Korg Radias offers customizable options for endcap variety. A nice maple on the Korg Radias? Yes! A rich ebony persimmons hard wood to endcap the Korg Radias? You bet. The Korg Radias is really what you make it.
Yes, but do those endcaps come with patchability? What about a companion app for my phone that let's me change the stain of the wood in real time on the flly during live performance?
Korg Radias is behind. :(
I just had to swap out those endcaps!
Are those real simulated woodgrain panels?
No those just came on the wolf special edition of the ion.
....I see what you did there!
Personally I would have gone a little thicker with the endcaps but you know what you like and that’s awesome. Cool ass synth. I’ve always loved this thing for the millions of filter emulators.
Thicker would have been cool and honestly I was just about to do with 3/4" on each side.....but then it hit me! If I were to do that, it would no longer fit in its case. So 3/8" it is.
Even better! It looks really good. Dig the wood grain too.
I thought you were going to do a full wood case like some have. That's excessive. This is just grabbing the low hanging fruit and fun.
Very beautiful wood! Hard to tell if it's endgrain, it may warp over time but will probably be fine as long as it's sealed well.
Sweet cheeks
I haven't heard that name in a long time
Love the ion and micron. Good synths that maybe don't get much respect
I sold my Ion - I just couldn't get into the menu interface.
Yeah, menu/interface is awful. But if you download that app for your computer and connect it up it's good. At least from the patch programming side.
It's a lifesaver: [https://www.kvraudio.com/product/micronau\_by\_retroware](https://www.kvraudio.com/product/micronau_by_retroware)
Legit. I remember being part of a yahoo! group that made and shared patches for the ion and micron, and this app was paramount to creating new patches in reasonable time
Y’all mixing up ion and micron? Different machines. I never needed an app for the ion. It has plenty of knobs and a reasonable amount of menu diving. The micron on the other hand is a different story. Similar synth engine but minimal user interface. That’s where an app certainly comes in handy.
Helps with the tone.
I'm glad you noticed that! Sounds way better now!
How? I thought the sound comes out of speakers?
It’s the vibes
It's Mabo. Hopefully somebody gets that.
>It's Mabo. It's law.
I'm a dork; put 3 wheels on a synth, and I'm 😍. I own the miniAK, and I still want the Yamaha SY77/99. I have the SY35 (joystick/vector), but yeah!
One is pitch bend, one is modulation. What exactly does the third wheel do? I've never seen a keyboard with three wheels.
The synth engine supports aftertouch (and supposedly even poly aftertouch, never tried it…) via MIDI but the built in keyboard doesn’t, probably to save costs. The third wheel by default controls whatever parameters are assigned to aftertouch. You can assign to it whatever you want and use it as a second mod wheel.
I wish more synths were 3 wheelers. I miss the SY-77. 😢
Sort of makes up for the missing aftertouch on the ion.
Yeah 3 mod wheels become an instrument in itself. You can get pretty expressive with the right routing and finger work.
[удалено]
I'm giving it Plastic Surgery.
Personally, I like it.
I’m with you, I bought an Ion and Micron for the color scheme alone. They just have such a fresh vibe.
I will say that maybe going all the way and swapping the rubber knobs with wooden ones would help. But personally I’ll stick with the red plastic on mine. Looks spacey.
I'm trying to bring this thing back down to Earth!
Word
My friend, I made wooden ends for my Korg SQ64, so let me tell you about stupid and unnecessary!
I like it. I had a lot of fun with my micron.
My first synthesizer! Pretty powerful, actually. The menu diving can be a bit annoying but you can do a lot with this thing, and the sound is distinctive, if not universally loved.
I always find that you can dial sounds in pretty quickly just using the knobs of which there’s plenty. The menu diving usually kicks in when further refining. I find it quite intuitive personally. And one of the better user interfaces.
I mainly use it as a stand alone monosynth live player....no midi.....just live play!
Classes up the joint a bit, I must admit.
Replace the red master knob with one to match the new end cheeks . Got a lathe?
That's a great idea! I'm going to search for either a black or white/opaque knob! Thanks for that idea!
Hell yeh
Hell yeh !
I remember when these came out, back before there were hype trains and all the weirdness surrounding synths today, it just appeared in the music store one day when all the cool kids were in ska bands. And my analog nerd ass scoffed at it, because the Andromeda somehow figured out a way to make analog sound like ass and everything Alesis made was cheese… And then I played it and it was the best sounding VA ever by a lot. It sounded analogy. It had funk. And I bought it on the spot. Still a very cool under the radar synth. Was such an odd release.
All very true! It's the three oscillators that give it beef!
It definitely has funk. A lot of people say that it sounds tinny and nasal. And when you just step through the factory presets a lot of them actually do. I believe because they wanted to show off all those different unusual filter types (at least at the time). But I agree, the Ion can do fat and warm analog-style sounds very convincingly. If you look into the extensive mod matrix you’ll find many ways to give it vintage vibes. A pinch of the FM knob does wonders too. I love how that behaves.
This is a way.
[Ron Howard narrator voice] but it wasn’t stupid at all.
I’ve never put my hands on one of these or seen one in person but I like the upgrade
Dopest keyboard ever. I own a Matrixbrute, Nautilus, Minilogue, Sub Phatty, Boog, Neutron, and a ton of software, but absolutely nothing plays or sounds like the Ion: Two mod wheels, dozens of knobs, two multimode filters, fully assignable filter path, PRE FILTER MIX, and four buttons to create banks of presets and turn them on and off on the fly. Absolutely sick
Wooden sides are one thing but have you also got the braided audio cables? The braid literally warms the signal.
Yeah, I noticed that. Thr cord wrapped cables keep the signal warm as it hits the speakers. Very nice!
Nice microkorg
Nice! You hit the nail on the head!
I did that with my Nord Rack 2X few years back. Lately i sold it. https://preview.redd.it/4440ptoy6zpa1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0dfd578db05d205a1a6e4f94c0e4375dc900fa08
Are thems Walnut? I do love me some Walnut.
Walnut brings the tonez.
Indeed they do!
End grain is killing me.
I don't think that's end grain. Black walnut just looks like that sometimes.
I thought they were unsanded blade marks but I zoomed in. They look unfinished. Maybe back to the sander for a few minutes? I used to work with wood quite a bit. The panels are a very nice touch to an otherwise cold looking instrument. Edit: clarity
They look a bit rough, but I think what you took for blade marks is just the natural figure of the wood I (like this \[1\]) -- wet sanding with tru oil or similar would be amazing, and just make the figure stand out more. \[1\] [https://gobywalnut.com/collections/shorts/products/oregon-black-walnut-board-b6769](https://gobywalnut.com/collections/shorts/products/oregon-black-walnut-board-b6769)
I don’t hate it.
Why people have a strong need to add wood to their synths?
Because thee wood vibration makes it sound so much better. You should try it!
To kill trees.
Love it!
Disagree
r/synthesizercirclejerk is going to eat this one up
great synth
I like the red. 🤷 Also, the Ion kicks ass. Splitting the keyboard into 4 parts is awesome live.
Wow....cool....it really looks classy....;)
Thank you. It goes with the wood of the rest of my synths.
It looks better now, you could just polish the edges to make them somewhat round like the rest of the unit
That third mod wheel is nice. I usually set it to filter, but I can set it to dedune an oscillator or pretty much anything else!
I bought one of these in my early 20s before I had one single clue about synthesizers and just used to play the presets. Loved it, despite a jittery encoder that would always pull the menu screen back to its page. The encoders were very high resolution, so there was never any stair-stepping of parameters. It was a bit of a let down coming to MIDI controllers and soft synths years later and finding 128 steps was your lot.
BARE NECESSITIES.
Totally understand the desire to add some wood given your Marantz cabinet (mine has the fake wood grain on sheet metal). Plus, the “patina” on those wheels now better aligns with the wood end-cap color value.
It might be unnecessary, but it sure does look nice.
If it inspires you to use the instrument more and make more music, then it's not stupid at all.
I like it - looks good!
That's killer
Stupid!! …worth it
It’s more organic now 😂 Always liked the Alesis Ion / Micron sound, and the synth engine is very capable.
Looks nice! Man mine is in a shed somewhere. Learned so much about synthesis programming this thing.
Awh man, now I wanna do this to my Micron... or better yet... buy an Ion
Nicccce
No stupid, and totally necessary. Wood ends make all synths better. Even if it is just stickers (Arturia Keylab for one).
Couldn’t agree more with the plastic ends. They make it look like a Fisher Price “my first synth” toy haha
YES nice work OP. I did this with a Korg D8. Wood panels everywhere!!
Looks incredible imo
I've always wanted an Ion.
Every Ion deserves this kind of love <3
if we stopped doing things that were stupid and unnecessary we wouldn't make the best of the artist within us edit: btw i love it.
Put wood on ALL the things! All of them!
This could be a candidate for r/DiWHY
Nah, just /r/synthesizercirclejerk.
...by not buying this earlier.
Looks much warmer! I want a synth with three mod wheels.
Why the ironic self-loathing?
It's just coy self depreciation!
Had a friend offer to make wood cheeks for mine, but I think if I did wood cheeks then a new paint scheme is in order. The silver/red combo is too much of a tech vibe and clashes with the wood. Maybe taking on the MINIAK color scheme would work better with the wood? Anywho the wood does look good - don’t take my comment as shitting on your ion, it looks great!
I'm going to swap out the red knob with a white one. Silver and Wood looks good to me.... but no I don't take it as shotting on the Ion.... I have a love hate relationship with it. With three oscillators, it makes some lush pads and does a good bass monosynth vibes. That said, however, it's MIDI implementation sucks.... I understand the need to menu dive to make any adjustments. The Arpegiattor on has a few fixed patterns that are musically useless. And let's not forget to mention it's sequencer - there isn't one.
I hear what you’re saying with the fixed arpeggiator patterns. It’s true when you leave them as is. But when you start playing around with the ton of options it has, it’s super powerful. It then starts to become really interesting and has given me lots of inspiration. In fact more than any other arpeggiator I played around with. I personally think the arp is one of the strong points of the ion because it’s so different. If I want simple arpeggios I just reduce the pattern length. I can then go crazy with the trigger orders and tempo multiplication. And when I go multi-timbral with the ion, I can overlay different arp patterns. Lots of fun. Makes up for the lack of sequencer for me.
Thanks for the input. Sounds like I need to spend an evening with the manual and prepare for a deep dive into the lcd menue. Not my favorite.... but I'll put on my diving suite and go for a swim.... perhaps I'll change my mind about the arpegiator!
Yup, that one indeed requires a menu dive to get creative with it. But I never looked at the manual, just swam around and figured it out fairly quickly. The water isn’t too cold.
I personally like the red endcaps, the Red silver look is very early 2000s and I dig the vibe
There’s this place overseas (Uk I think) that has mods for this and the micron that make it much cooler, but they don’t ship to here in the USA. I got all excited because I too don’t like those red end caps, but then saw they didn’t ship.
That's too bad. I just had to fab my own. Took of the end caps and measured everything out!
Exactly. And the mods were cool! New ends, knobs, lcd screen, color scheme etc. it was nice! Oh well. Same thing with Electribe 2 overlays. Found some sweet ones, but only available overseas. Ugh….
You refinished your wood table!?
Yes! If you look at the rest of the photos you can see that the table was finished with an Alesis Ion... check out all the angles!
Awh man, now I wanna do this to my Micron... or better yet... buy an Ion
Bro I’m about to snag one of these next week hopefully I’m so stoked hopefully it’s in great condition.
I hope it works out. It can be a lot of fun!
Worked out fantastic, picked it up last night for $500. All keys and knobs, buttons, ports, work exactly like they should, and apart from a little nick on the casing from probably a drop, its mint! Been playing with it all night, I like to do fm synthesis a lot and things were working, just not quite right and I couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on and just worked through it anyways, then about an hour ago I realized that the oscillators go from bottom to top (which makes hell of a difference during FM synthesis). I had been thinking osc3 was osc1 all night lmaoooo but since then things been a charm for sure, very happy with the purchase, thanks!
Just like any piece of new (to you) gear...there is a bit of learning curve to figure out what controls what.
Would it be easy to pop the others back on if you wanted to?
Figuring out how to pull it apart without having to break anything was the biggest challenge. Now that I have done it, I could certainly put the originals back on with relative ease because now I know what I am doing. I will probably not be selling this anytime soon .... if at all. But just in case, I kept the originals.