My black octatrack mkii has a glitch that causes the led lights on trigs 3-6 to stay various colors. I used a grey mkii for years and never had this issue. Has anybody else had this problem? If so, were you able to fix it?
Hi. This probably requires a physical repair. Usually this indicates a problem with the LED lights in the trig buttons.
Go into test mode by holding down func while the OT is powered off, then power it on while holding func and release the button when it boots into test mode.
Run the error test and when it completes, you can start pressing buttons and it should give some indication of what you’re pressing on the display. This is the keys test.
I’m not positive with Octatrack specifically but usually (for other elektron gear) trigs 1 and 2 cause the screen to light up completely or go completely black and that’s a dead pixel test, then trigs 3 - 4 - 5 respectively will make all the LED lights illuminate in the 3 primary colors which they use, so red, green and blue. Just press trig keys until they cause everything to light up in the same colors across the entire machine.
Look at the problematic trigs while doing that keys test and while all the other lights are illuminated in the specific colors, and if those trigs don’t follow along (so if all others are green and one stays red) then that usually means the switch underneath which contains the light needs to be replaced.
If your test shows a behavior similar to this, probably best for you to contact elektron support.
Good luck.
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Thanks for getting back to me. I did what you suggested, it seems that those trigs must be faulty because they don’t switch colors like the other trigs. Thanks again, hopefully having them repaired wont cost me too much.
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No problem. That sucks, I would look at the bottom of the machine and check the sticker for the build date.
It should say something like MFGDT: and then a week and a year. That would tell you when it was built and the warranty extends for 3 years from that date, or if you have the original purchase receipt then instead it would be 3 years from that date on the receipt. If you’re within the 3 years, the repair should not cost you anything at all.
Also, I would ask elektron if there’s any additional troubleshooting they recommend. In my experience this usually requires physical repair, but you never know.
Can you look at the sticker now or is it not with you?
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Unfortunately the date on the back says 2021 so I guess its probably not under warranty anymore. I’m in LA though and it seems like there’s an elektron service center here, maybe ill be able to save on some shipping costs if I can just take it there.
Yeah, it might be less expensive than you think. Alternatively, if you have a service guy who works cheap, you could purchase the buttons from them but though the buttons are cheap, shipping of the buttons is kinda expensive from what I remember so while I would encourage you to see if they have any other ideas before committing to a repair, I think that it’s probably a better use of your money to put it towards the repair and have the parts be included and just do it all in one shot.
Bummer that you’re out of the warranty period but shit happens, you know? If it was working when you got it there’s really no way the prior owner or you could predict they would fail, and it’s only one of the 3 color elements in the LED that failed because I’m assuming that other than the missing color, it behaves normally.
At least you have a little more information to go on now though, so that’s something. Better to have a gameplan than to have to wing it with stuff like this.
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Thanks for the help and the advice. I just got an email from elektron saying that the repair would be $50 not including shipping and parts so ill give the LA repair center a call and see if there’s a way to drop it off there. Thanks again tho, you have been very helpful.
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