I recently purchased an Octatrack and the action on the crossfader is really loose, like there’s no resistance whatsoever. I remember fiddling with an Octatrack at Guitar Center a while back and it was the same thing, but i attributed it to an abused floor demo. Can anyone chime in here and tell me if this is normal? Or does your crossfader have resistance?
The crossfader feels very loose/light to me. There’s no vertical movement, its not like the knob feels like it’s going to fall off or anything, but just the general left-right movement of it feels very very light.
I appreciate there is literally no way to quantify what any of us thinks is loose/stiff, but I’m hoping a load of you are going to go ‘oh yea, that’s the way it is on the Octatrack’.
Both my mid-production Mk1 and early production Mk2 OTs have very light faders. As far as I’m aware, that’s how they were designed. Feels like a high quality mixer to me! (I’m not a DJ and have mostly touched low budget mixers)
The reason it does not feel the same as most other faders is because it is not a simple resistive element linear potentiometer like most faders, but a digital optical one, it glides on lubricated metal rails.
Not sure if it is the case on MK2 models but on MK1 you could tighten or loosen a screw on the sliding assembly to adjust the friction.
The faders on my TR-8s offer only a little more resistance than the Mk2 OT (I no longer have the Mk1). But the difference is substantial. I can “bounce” the OT fader between two fingers, but that doesn’t really work on the TR-8s. Which is fine, because I don’t want my levels changing if I sneeze near the TR-8s.
Hmm. I didn’t planned to open OT tonight !
I was wondering about this kind of crossfader lubrification. What kind of “oil”? I’d like to try silky smooth mode !
And I also want to try to add some weight to it…