Logitech USB headset workaround failed

I have a logitech USB headset 250 and it's the only audio device on my system (onboard is totally disabled in bios) . It worked perfectly in Dapper LTS. Upon installing feisty it would no longer work. The problem seems to reside in Alsa and I confirmed it by installing edgy and updating alsa (which recreated the problem). I followed the workaround from https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/101920
to create an .asoundrc in my home folder. That fixed the audio but when I type alsamixer into a terminal I get: alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device and quite a few programs that use audio such as mplayer and acidrip will still fail to find the audio device and crash. The problem seems to be that alsa is pointing to a non-existent device for use as the default audio.
ps: I have noticed a lot of other people having this problem but no available answer resolves it.

this is my .asoundrc:

pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "combined"
}

pcm.combined {
type asym
playback.pcm "playback"
capture.pcm "hw:1,0"
}

pcm.playback {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:1,0"
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 4096
rate 44100
}
bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}

ctl.dmixer {
type hw
card 1
}pcm.!default {
type plug
slave.pcm "combined"
}

pcm.combined {
type asym
playback.pcm "playback"
capture.pcm "hw:1,0"
}

pcm.playback {
type dmix
ipc_key 1024
slave {
pcm "hw:1,0"
period_time 0
period_size 1024
buffer_size 4096
rate 44100
}
bindings {
0 0
1 1
}
}

ctl.dmixer {
type hw
card 1
}

output from amixer:
amixer: Mixer attach default error: No such device

however amixer -c1 returns:
Simple mixer control 'Mic',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pvolume-joined cvolume pswitch pswitch-joined cswitch cswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Mono
  Capture channels: Mono
  Limits: Playback 0 - 464 Capture 0 - 13
  Mono: Playback 0 [0%] [-41.00dB] [on] Capture 0 [0%] [16.00dB] [on]
Simple mixer control 'Speaker',0
  Capabilities: pvolume pswitch pswitch-joined
  Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
  Limits: Playback 0 - 44
  Mono:
  Front Left: Playback 31 [70%] [-10.00dB] [on]
  Front Right: Playback 31 [70%] [-10.00dB] [on]

output from cat /proc/asound/cards 1:
 [Headset ]: USB-Audio - Logitech USB Headset
                      Logitech Logitech USB Headset at usb-0000:00:0a.0-1, full speed