This is a sound strategy if your goal is to obtain an OT and make music.
If you want to learn to repair broken audio gear, keep your eyes open for the cheapest broken stuff possible. IDK if old analog hifi gear is still cheap, but that’s a good starting point. Under-loved synths are another good choice.
Get some practicing with desoldering and repairs and then when a premium piece shows up you will be better able to assess your own ability to do repairs.
“in a zen kind of way” ahahahaha 
Did someone say Zen?
In Zen Buddhism, the keisaku (Japanese: 警策, Chinese: 香板, xiāng bǎn ; kyōsaku in the Soto school) is a flat wooden stick or slat used during periods of meditation to remedy sleepiness or lapses of concentration. This is accomplished through a strike or series of strikes, usually administered on the meditator’s back and shoulders in the muscular area between the shoulder and the spine. The keisaku itself is thin and somewhat flexible; strikes with it, though they may cause momentary sting if performed vigorously, are not injurious.
Are we about to start talking about chips now?
I wouldn’t mind … but I would like to ask again … what if the mcu/processor of the OT breaks? Would elektron be able to repair this or would the unit be bricket and more like the doorstopper that was sold on ebay? Has anyone done this via elektron and how was your experience (time/money/success?)
This is really solid advice! 
Thanks!
Of all the components to go bad, embedded processors are some of the least likely components to do so. You could probably get a person to reflow yours cheaply if there were intermittencies between chip and mainboard.
For the earlier systems like MnM with DSP issue warnings, pretty sure those with the issues were produced in the transition to RoHS, when unleaded solder formulas were in their infancy and production tooling hadn’t been perfected.
It wasn’t just these devices, I had to deal with the nightmare of laptop discrete onboard video in one of my roles and stuff like the Xbox 360 “red ring of death”.
I would absolutely not worry about that. it is an extremely uncommon mode of failure.
Strong second. This is good advice. Learning to do some basic repairs is a really good thing to do, but an Octatrack is not the thing to start on.
Oh I was just worrying that it got damaged because the seller tried to switch the display themselves.
And I have an update: I asked them about the product demo and they were really nice about it, but later on decided to de-list the article. They wanted more time to investigate the issue.
I am viewing this as a win for everyone by the way. They will get more info about the unit which they can include in the article description if they are going to sell it again. If it is something bad, like something is damaged besides the display, they protect the buyer, ff it is something good they could get more money. Btw. I think they were on the safe side legally anyways, they stated that the unit is defective and excluded taking it back and they excluded the warranty.
This wouldn’t have happened without your answers, which may be nice to know.
Yeah! And while we’re highly opinionated on it, it’s mostly because many of us have had that “what if?!” thought and appealing to our inner optimists has… not worked out so good for those of us who’ve tried
I’ve definitely been burned by evasive “this doesn’t work, and I’m not smart enough to guess, but it makes noise or whatever” and the device has been dropped from a high elevation and has a broken circuit board. If it seemed an easy fix and the price was “too good”, surely they could’ve found a local to do it for them or someone online with experience would have taken them up on the offer. There’s always a “I BUY ANALOG SYNTHS IN ANY CONDITION” person on my local listing site at least.
It’s much more fun to replace mildly broken physical components like USB ports on keyboard controllers, I can get some experience with less pressure and if I want, flip them for more (or net neutral considering effort and shipping.)
I’ve done a few local classes on soldering, but long for a desoldering class. I’ve got solder suckers and braided wicks, plenty of flux but there’s a timing I need to get better at beyond knowing when to remove components intact and when to clip the leads and purge them.
I’ve found that there seems to be a relationship between types of solder and types of braid. I have a few different spools of braid, and one usually works well and the rest don’t work at all for a given PCB / solder formulation. I’ve lifted too many pads & traces with my manual solder sucker, but would give the Hakko heated sucker a try that @Airyck recommended in another thread if I had a big project ahead of me.
For practice, you can buy literally any cheap electronics form a second hand store / craigslist and just depopulate the PCB until you are comfortable. Sometimes you just have to reach for the dikes and cut off all the legs though. 
Thanks, that is definitely my next step, I haven’t gotten the muscle memory, ideal temperature for the specific and deeper understanding of the balance between flux use, new solder, and removal technique.
Since these are generally expensive items I’m even bothering with I haven’t yet wanted to drop on the Hakko, but it seems an excellent solution to targeted application and removal!
Thanks, so much of this is presented plainly as if the person has had some sort of interning/mentoring/practice training through their livelihood that I feel super clumsy for how easy the process can be described
A nice electronics project I would try in the next time is some pt2399 delay/reverb or I am going to put it into some kind of noise box.
Since my octatrack bargain is simply a dream right now I am going to start out with mechanical stuff, maybe combined with a looper. The initial cost is low and I can experiment. Oh and I also bought a used microfreak for ~210€ which is an amazing deal. So … mf it is and for experiments pt2399 + whatever + maaaaybeeee a looper, but I am not going to care about quality right now and would buy a cheap tiny one, probably a used one for 15-20 bucks. Or I’ll ask some guitarist friend if they can lend me their non-favorite looper for a week or so.
By the way, elektron support replied:
A CPU for Octatrack MKI is 342EUR. A display is 36EUR.
Shipping and work are not included.
…
I would but it for ~200£. I’m currently looking for a “doesn’t work, or for parts” Octatrack in UK.