It has to be said I don’t often get excited about kit, comes with being about too many years, there are always new versions of tried and tested ideas, some call it copy catting some call it improvement, moving on, keeping it all up to date, I believe in the latter there is so far as I have discovered no one size fits all, there are though some superb products where one size fits the vast majority…..Some of the closest things to being **THEE PRODUCT** are in niche parts of the play spectrum….Electrics would be one such niche and a box made by ErosTek the ET312 and ET312B was always that….
Just prior to Covid the guy’s at ErosTek decided to cease all wholesale and just do retail, I’m sure you can imagine the increase in demand was huge, then throughout Covid many strange things happened one was huge and I do mean huge increases in transport costs and another was a world shortage in circuit boards, ErosTek at this point stopped production and announced the ET312 & 312B was no more… a project to revive the ErosTek ET312 & ET312B started almost immediately such was the outcry at the loss of this electric box, on Github and the various forums relating to electrics there was free software downloads, construction and instruction manuals on how to build your own 312 and quite rapidly that is exactly what happened, guys with electrics experience started making boxes and they appeared in the usual places for sale, Ebay, Etsy etc etc……
It was inevitable I guess that some very clever guy in amongst the many replicating the original box was going to do a **bring it into 2023** upgrade/revamp and to date that has happened twice the guy’s from Electrified Experiences make the one pictured above, it looks near identical to the old 312 models as in case, buttons, dials, switches etc, however inside it is very much improved, then there is the one below
The Micro312, as you can see from the picture above this is a total revamp, a huge change both inside and out, looking at the picture you could be forgiven for thinking that the big version would be more powerful, NO, the small one is more powerful much much more powerful, I have owned one around about a month now and I have to say I had 6 ErosTek boxes, 3 I have already sold and the other 3 will be going as soon as I can buy some Micro312 boxes to replace them, I really really am very excited by this bit of kit….
So whats changed I hear you ask……Quite a lot, nearly all components are now SMD instead of through-hole, the battery is a single rechargeable lithium cell, the battery charging circuit has been changed to suit the new battery, the run time on the new battery is equal to the old original so super long, charging is done via a standard USB-C input instead of a dedicated wall adapter, you can if you choose use a wall adapter to. Internal 5V and 9V supplies were changed from Dropout regulators to more efficient switch mode boost convertors. A master output control knob was added to provide a way to adjust both channels simultaneously, an option to add BlueTooth audio input whilst retaining the wired audio and mic inputs, there are now no separate physical switches for the push buttons, the 4 user interface buttons are instead integrated into a custom made front panel with membrane switches. A completely different and massively improved unit…..Want one? Visit Enfettered by clicking the banner below….
