Pulling it down works mostly as expected, but from the first day of use, pushing it up would cause it to bump down by an entire note for the first ½-ish, then after that it bumps up an entire note.
There's also some play/deadzone going down.
In other words, if I play a D note on the MicroBrute, and pull the Pitch wheel DOWN, then as I go from 0% to about -5%, nothing happens. From there to about -90%, it scales down from a D to a C. From there to -100%, it acts as though it's hit its maximum amount and doesn't pitch bend any further.
If I push it UP, I get the same approximate amount of deadzone before it suddenly jumps DOWN to C again. Then, when I hit that last deadzone bit at the end, it jumps UP to E.
It seems as if there's a deadzone in the middle (start) and on both ends (end). This is reasonable and acceptable. What isn't reasonable is that when I try to pitch bend up, the entire active area is transposing down rather than pitchbending up, and then when I hit the end it shifts to transpose up.
I looked around and saw some people saying you could rip the thing apart and solder some bits here and there but this is a brand new in-box synthesizer and it doesn't really make sense to destroy my warranty and such just to gain a functional pitchbend. Physically, nothing is slipping inside or anything (which I've seen happen on some pitch bends).
Is there a way to fix just that bit in software? Like a recalibration utility or a patched firmware that doesn't have that bug? I don't know how to downgrade back to the original firmware that was on it when it arrived to see if that's the issue, but anything that would even possibly help would be absolutely wonderful.
Overall it's a great little synth and it's my first foray into the so-called affordable analog synths, and the pitch wheel isn't entirely necessary, it's just a bother.
Edit: If a lack of pitch bend were detrimental and I wasn't worried about warranties I would have already tried soldering a new part or two inside, I don't mind doing that, I'd just rather start with software before modifying it at a hardware level, if that makes sense.
