I’m on no gear this year, but hope to try a Perkons out next year at a large synth shop.
I just installed the new kit pack on the SD card and…welp, the Perkons no longer works. The lights turn on, but the machine no longer functions. I just submitted a ticket with Erica. Fingers crossed for a quick fix!!
Well my LXR-02 arrived and is going to have to go back due to a wonky encoder (turning it down it sometimes goes up instead, really annoying when trying to dial in a value lol). Maybe it is the universe’s way of telling me I should have gone with the perkons, so I’m thinking I might just bite the bullet and get one…
Anyone regretting it or want to try and talk me out of it? It would basically be the only piece of gear I would buy this year…
Sounds like I shouldn’t try installing the new kits though!
Well… I bought my second LXR-02 this week. Which is in fact my third LXR because I used to have the DIY version…
The LXR sound just slaps and although the Perkons interface is really appealing, I can’t really find demos outside kodek that make me wanna spend 2k.
@HBIII I think it’s quite a common issue that sometimes a value would just change on its own without even touching an encoder, not great!
I’ve had times when BPM was set to 0/external and suddenly it jumped to 1 and my pattern effectively stops playing. I don’t stay on the BPM page for long nowadays mine lxr-02 was bought new and has had this issue from day 1.
[EDIT] - I’ve never had value go up when I turn it down, or vice versa.
Wait, you have 2 Perkons?
Okay…so Erica responded with a firmware update. Tried it, no dice. Now they are telling me to open up the machine, take apart the PCB, the MCU board, file it down, and reassemble.
This feels like a big ask, and honestly I’m terrified I’ll break the Perkons if I do this. Does this feel like acceptable advice? Honestly at this point I’d rather send it back for a refund. Love this machine, but yikes!
I had the same response from them today, the machine in the video I posted earlier seems to have defective hardware as well as I can’t save kits/patterns or do firmware updates via the sd card. The problem is that some of their MCU boards seem to have too much pcb material at the side of the connectors - the connectors are too far from the edge, so they won’t connect properly. That excess material is what needs to be filed away.
That being said, you only have an MCU board when you have a newer revision of the machine - when I opened it, the MCU was fixed on the main pcb, I have an April 2022 revision - the June 2022 apparently has the separate MCU board. I’ll have to send mine in for a replacement, but I would have attempted to do the repair myself. However, it’s really a big ask for a machine with that price tag.
Nope haha, these are pics off Facebook.
This is really unacceptable. I just asked Erica for a refund or replacement.
I think that’s actually the best way forward. Good luck!
@fin25 Did you ever nab one and sell it? I forget if/why.
@cLAss85 hanks for the info about slightly misaligned PCBs, I’ll take into account if I order one down the line.
Yes, bought one, sold it pretty quickly.
Just didn’t get on with it, too big and felt like too much money for what I wanted it for.
Thanks! I’m currently wrestling with programming interesting modular beats over intentionality through my Elektron devices and trying to think of what I might enjoy more, while “too big and too much money” is indeed a thing (no, I do NOT need a Pulsar-23…) the easy playability of the Perkons might win out and especially if I clear room, move from a larger case to a teeny tiptop HEK for only modulation sources.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s fantastic. It just wasn’t the one for me.
Solved! Thanks to the guidance of Joshua Holley on FB I shifted the Global Midi to Internal and that solved it. Thank god I didn’t crack the machine open and start hacking away at it like I was advised by Erica.
Back to the beats! Thanks for the community help on this.
Great drum machine but you have to love the sound.