Mine had the same weird crimped marks on the border of the screen as well as glue and a back light bleed as well.
I returned mine to the retailer.
Sad to see this was not just a one off. 
5 Likes
I expect this explains why the PT Mini has taken so long to hit retail from the announcement.
It seems they have been suffering some QC issues which are not fully solved.
This potentially explains the OG Tracker sale. They may well have been burning some inventory to generate cash to deal with the QC issues and the gap in projected sales.
I hope they get it sorted. Making low volume hardware is incredibly hard.
For my own part I will be skipping this until we are a few batches in and hopefully the quality has improved.
6 Likes
I feel sorry for the retailers at this point in time. If this is going to be an on-going situation, they are the one’s suffering from the biggest hit (if they have stay respectable to their returns policy.)
I’ve never returned any instrument until this. My OP-Z should’ve been returned but I never did because I feel in love with what it could do (Andertons). Ditto the OB-4. (Amazon). My OB-4 top plate has warped over time. The battery comes nowhere close to the stated hours. But worst of all is the warble/fluctuations. I’m not the only one who has this so that in a way is sadly comforting. Just not what you want from a very expensive speaker. Basically, I’m fed up with lousily produced instruments.
When an artist you like comes out with new album, that album will cost the same as their last. You judge that album on the music. Folk don’t generally judge the case.
I’ve never used the tracker workflow before. So I just do want this (hopefully) one bad experience to taint the device I want. Which is the Polyend Tracker Mini. Just not as it is right now.
and have never ordered anything from the shop I got it from before. UK based, very solid reputation, hence I’ll not name them. It’s not their fault. Quite unlike GuitarGuitar who…well, another time maybe.
1 Like
Making someone wait almost 6 months for a prepaid device that is poor build quality…oof
4 Likes
This is a reply from the Polyend Backstage forum which almost explains what’s going on.
I really respect them/Mitch for being honest, on a forum. I don’t want to see this product fail, I want a beautiful machine that I’ll love for a long time. So I’m grateful the issues have been acknowledged.
…
Sorry that your Mini came in this condition. In the scramble to get preorders out as fast as we could, we had a small batch slip through QC that we were not happy about and did not meet our build standards. If you have build quality issues please contact support@polyend.com and we will help you out.
…
A small batch slip through?
No. I don’t believe this is the case. This was not a pre-order. And certain similar flaws can be seen on certain YT videos. Let’s not lose perspective here. This is not a £50 game that disappoints
due to ill informed hype. This is a £600+ machine that should only have a few firmware flaws to iron out. Instead of ironing out the machine to make it flat.
Mines gonna be shipping back. But, I will buy it again because I believe it may well be just the right machine for me.
2 Likes
Nah, I don’t pre-order anything, You’d be daft to. I just did the next worst thing.
1 Like
yeah…polyend stays minimizing customer concerns by offering up pretty thin, “not our fault tho!” reasoning
4 Likes
Smells fishy. Especially from a company that has had quality issues in the past(Tracker version 1).
Honestly disappointed cause I really want to like them and the products have a lot of potential. It’s just sad to see little respect to consumers again and again.
Don’t understand how they were aware of the faulty “small batch”, yet still managed to ship them out. More likely there was no QC at all and the units were just boxed straight after assembly.
2 Likes
Yeah that seems a bit weird to me. I guess it’s possible that they could have discovered a gap in the QC process after that batch went out, but I am less inclined to think this given their history of QC issues.
2 Likes
You mean Push 3? Yeah, my point was that if Polyend charges 700 for a piece of hardware that has very consistently questionable build quality, that makes the 2000 price tag of the Push 3 Standalone seem reasonable. After all, that’s also a mighty fine 64-pad MPE controller, an audio interface and an incredibly competent daw, sequencer, sampler, looper, etc etc.
No doubt. Their hardware is impeccable.
As someone with real world experience shipping hardware to early backers while dealing with QC issues in a new production line, I’m pretty sure that that’s just the way they choose to downplay it when communicating about it in public. They’d be insane if they chose to say “yeah we’re dealing with a bunch of QC and we don’t yet have full control of the situation, pray for us”. 
I’m sure they’ll sort it out soon though.
6 Likes
A reply from the Polyend team (on their forum).
To clarify right now all our orders are preorders from dealers or customers.
…
My reply;
If something hasn’t been released but is due in the future, I’d class that as a pre-order. But if a product is available to buy from an independent retailer/shop, it’s in stock, gets shipped and arrives in your hands the next day…that is most certainly not a ‘pre-order’.
3 Likes
What I don’t understand in the context of their reply is this other reply they sent out:
“It seems the plastic case might be deformed a bit, but since it is a handheld device, it shouldn’t be a problem”
They went from “it shouldn’t be a problem” to “small batch slipped through CQ”.
The narrative doesn’t add up.
8 Likes
Exactly. But don’t ya love a good mystery?
And so, would anyone care to share a few photo’s of there’s?
Except wobbly cases (e.g. my Digitakt) and sticking buttons which actually get sticky after some time? Same issue (but concerning the whole unit) with Push 2 as I’ve heard… we’ll see how P3 fares after a few years.
Nothing is perfect. Most important thing is how the company handles such issues. Will they acknowledge it, maybe even replace it, if it’s some manufacturing fault, or will they say “not our problem”?
2 Likes
Yeah, I’ve had plenty of bad units over the years from major manufacturers (skippy dsi evolver encoders, monomachine + drive failure, sticky buttons on an analog rytm, broken walrus audio switch out of box, bad encoder out of box from a meris hedra, scratchy cutoff knob on a moog sub37, and plenty more). In almost all of the instances, the customer support was top notch though. It’s just a matter of continuous direct communication to get your specific issue resolved. It sounds like polyend is going to cover warranty fix/replacement for the units with the swell which is a win.
1 Like
well this escalated quickly, deescalated quickly, and then escalated quickly again 
I would not say Elektron gear is impeccable. They’ve had many issues over the years. Most recently for me my Syntakt arrived with the circuit board partially detached and the screws loose.
1 Like
Ouch. Yeah I can only speak from my personal experience, you’re of course right.
mine came very nicely built. but at the same time my tracker gen 1 was okay too.
nothing janky, nothing swollen on the back, buttons in place, on/off button nicely centered.
the button near the one you push moves slightly but nothing major and it is to be expected since it is probably a board underneath with all buttons lined up that you are pushing.
overall the size is nice, the case is dope and you can pretty much carry it anywhere.
that is all I expected.
10 Likes
any chance you could possibly post up a few close-ups (especially how the side seams, the back and around the screen area) please.
2 Likes