Standby switch vs. leaving amp in run position vs. turning off

[agedhorse]

In general, the Alesis midi, micro and quadra products were very well built. There were a few design issues on the power supplies (IIRC it was mostly the eq and comp) that resulted in thermal failures, but I do not recall any of the DSP based products suffering from this.

Then, there was their attempt at a unitized construction mixer product that was for the most part an unmitigated disaster, nobody ever did THAT again .

 

[agedhorse]

Properly designed and manufactured is the goal but unfortunately not all companies do that. High quality control standards are so important.

Last night I had an old Eventide H000 Ultra-Harmonizer and a Yamaha SPX-90 from the 80’s apart. They really had their act together. Well designed and manufactured. They can stand up to the best of today which says a lot. As I recall, the Alesis Quadraverb was mostly surface mount, well done as well.

Good manufacturing practices evolve, standards and quality control change. Better manufacturing processes, machine inspection all help make better products today.

I did a lot of service of Yamaha products back in the day, all of the Japanese built products were well engineered, well executed and consistently reliable over a long lifespan (even in heavy duty touring applications). I have 2 large format Yamaha consoles myself that have thousands of shows on them without any issues. There are at least 20k solder joints inside each console, and failures are rarer than hen's teeth over the many thousands of consoles built.