Alesis Microverb (1986)
Sixteen presets, a black aluminum case the size of a car radio, and a power supply quirk that still trips up first-time owners.
Overview
The Alesis Microverb arrived in 1986 as a tabletop digital reverb unit. The rack gear of the day wasn't priced for a songwriter with a four-track, and this was. Alesis built it by stripping the MIDI functionality out of the MIDIverb design and keeping the core reverb engine. That brought the cost down to roughly a third of what competing models were charging. The company marketed it as the cheapest digital reverb in production at the time, and by the standards of the day that claim was the whole point of the product.
It's a small black aluminum box, about the size of a car radio, with three pots on the front: input level, output level, and a wet/dry mix. A rotary selector switch chooses among the sixteen presets. A tri-colored LED handles the metering - orange when the unit is off or idle, green when you're driving it properly, red when you're peaking. There is no screen, no menu, no editing. The presets are non-editable, which is either the best thing about the unit or the most frustrating, depending on what you're trying to do.
The sixteen reverb types break down into six "Small" settings, seven "Large" settings, two gated reverbs, and one reverse reverb. The unit accepts a footswitch, so guitarists could kick the effect in and out without reaching for the front panel. The inputs are stereo. The left jack doubles as a mono input when nothing is plugged into the right, and in that mono configuration the signal is routed equally to both outputs.
Power comes from a 9V AC adaptor. AC, not DC. The original wall-wart uses a strange plug, and substituting a common 9V DC supply is the fastest way to a dead Microverb. There is no discrete power switch, so the unit is live the moment the adaptor is connected to the wall.
Key Features
Sixteen Non-Editable Presets, Including a Reverse Reverb
The presets are the entire interface. Six small-room and seven large-room style reverbs cover the bread-and-butter work, two gated reverbs handle the snare-drum trick, and a single reverse reverb gives that swelling, backwards-sounding effect that was otherwise the province of much more expensive processors. Because the presets cannot be edited, you audition, pick the one that fits, and move on. For a lot of home recordists in 1986, that was a feature rather than a limitation.
Proprietary RISC Architecture and CMOS Chip Design
Inside, the Microverb runs on a proprietary RISC architecture with custom circuitry. The reverb input is derived from a mix of the left and right input channels, which is how the unit handles its stereo field. Alesis built the processing around a high-speed complementary-metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) chip that the company claimed replaced several circuit cards' worth of components while consuming very little power. Whether or not that claim held up under every measurement, the result was a small, cool-running box that did not need a fan or a large power supply.
Villard Voltage Doubler Power Section
The power section uses a Villard voltage doubler circuit built around six 330µF/25V capacitors and 1N400x diodes, and it requires a 9V AC adapter rather than DC. Know this before buying one secondhand: the wrong adaptor will not work, and in the worst case can damage the unit.
One-Third Rack Width with Side Fins
The case is one-third rack width, with side fins that let three units slot together into a 19-inch rack. On its own it sits on a desk or a shelf like a piece of consumer hi-fi, which is roughly how it was marketed - a tabletop unit for people who did not own a rack. The aluminum case is sturdy enough to survive decades of use, and the black finish hides the scuffs that pile up on gear that gets used.
Tri-Colour LED Metering and Simple Controls
Three potentiometers - input, output, and mix - plus a rotary preset selector and a single tri-color LED are the entire control surface. The LED shifts from orange to green to red as you push the input, which gives a usable if crude level indication without a proper meter. With no power switch, the unit is always on when plugged in. Keep that in mind if you leave it connected to a wall outlet in a rack full of other gear.
Historical Context
The Microverb was the first in a series that grew to include the Microverb II, III, and 4, with the line running until around 1996. By the mid-1990s the family had expanded into a full range of budget digital effects, with the Microverb III listed at £199 and the Microverb 4 at £299 in Sound on Sound (1996, p.49). It did not replace the MIDIverb - that unit stayed in the catalogue for users who needed program changes and remote control - but it made the core Alesis reverb sound accessible to a much wider audience. The target market was bedroom studio producers and mobile musicians. Alesis positioned it as an entry-level unit, and by the standards of the mid-1980s that is what it was, but the sound was a genuine step up from the budget options that preceded it.
Collectibility & Value
The original Microverb has settled into the same niche as most of the early Alesis effects line: cheap enough to buy on a whim. Current listings are thin, and there are no exact Alesis Microverb units live on the major marketplaces at the time of writing, though the model does turn up on eBay, eBay UK, eBay Ireland, and Reverb.com with some regularity.
Confirm the 9V AC adaptor is included or budget for sourcing one, because the strange power plug makes substitutions difficult. The aluminum case and simple construction mean there is not much to go wrong, but the lack of a power switch is worth checking before you commit. There is no documented repair history for the original Microverb specifically, so treat any unit as a bit of a gamble - a cheap one, but a gamble.
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