Well, my tracker mini ownership lasted a few hours. it’s going back.
that mic is amazing. Great size, great battery, great idea. but man, them buttons
the ones near the edge of the device are fairly firm and have a half decent action. still really cheap feeling but at least you can feel when it presses.
but Play and Rec are totally mushy, have no tangible action at all and feel like they’ll fail very soon.
I just can’t take that risk.
the other middle section buttons are mushy too. it feels like there’s no support under the middle buttons at all.
the cheapest feeling buttons I think I’ve ever seen
there’s also a 1.5" long gap in the glue / seam on the bottom left of the screen. perfect all around and then this gap where it wasn’t stuck.
tbh I’m a bit taken aback how they decided on such a poor, cheap build, especially considering how well put together the original 1st gen tracker was.
build quality on the model samples is vastly superior, for comparison.
sadly, it’s not for me. I’m gonna wait for an elektron handheld.
that mic tho, every sampler should have a built in mic. it rules.
Got my mini. No usage yet…just charging. I do see the seams are not totally tight around the sides in a few places. As long as it does not open up, I could care less. We’ll see in a few hours about the button feel and some of the software issues. The finger print smudges on the black casing is a bit annoying. More in a bit.
Well, spent about an hour playing with it at work. Boss and co worker left early! Sampled my paper cutter and a loud whack on the water bottle. Used a kick, snare, and loop sample with those other 2 sounds. Put a bit of delay on one step of the water bottle sound and some panning on the kick…FUN. Sounds good in my cheapie head phones, love the 4 + and - buttons, work great. The Menu button is good, so far so good for me. Loved the mic…gotta be a bit careful with extra sounds but it picks up sounds very well and it was fun to use.
Buttons seem totally fine to me. But I’m not picky at all.
No warpage but a bit of seam separation on the lower sides…but not too bad.
Will spend a lot more time with it this weekend but I’m enjoying it…so far.
Yes…the joypads and the 1,2,3,4 buttons are somewhat clicky, the play, rec, insert, etc buttons in the middle are more mushy comparatively. And when you hit certain buttons, some of the others move a little bit, they are connected. Like all the + and - move a bit when you click one of them…but they dont move much, just you see there are sets of buttons attached together…kind of odd.
I understand the mushy button feeling but it does not bother me yet…we’ll see if it does later and hope it does not lead to button issues!
Have to make sure to push the Play button in all the way as its hard to tell when it’s working because of that slight mushiness.
But, I had more fun with this in an hour than the M8 I tried twice so this is more my style of tracker for sure.
cheers for reporting back, I appreciate it rockfrog. Best of luck with it.
im still debating whether to go thru with my return tomorrow. have it boxed and return label printed it’s just them damn mushy buttons. I don’t mind the seams or anything.
Also, that darn black covering is all finger printed now and smeared…so dumb using that covering…but again, it’s fun to use and I love the OP1F but cant afford that so this will do for awhile.
I just read the manual and there are so many shortcuts, it’s really a nicely made machine with some issues but I don’t think it deserves as much negative stuff as I’m reading all over…but whatever, I will make some music and enjoy it myself!
Well. I say return it. I made a 4 track 32 step pattern at work. Cool fun. But tonight I played it at home and all of a sudden track 3 was not playing.
I started a new project and still no sound out of track 3. I rest the unit l, new project, still no sound.
Went back to my pattern, let it run and maybe in the 7th or 8th loop track 3 started playing again. Omg
Then track 3 worked on one of the other projects I had tried and failed before.
I’d maybe keep the thing but that was very sketchy. If the track worked in a new project I wouldn’t be as weirded out but not on any. Could be a hardware thing with that lane. I dunno.
I “might” keep mine as I played with it another hour and it never cut out again…but that is scary. I tried to midi sequence my eurorack and that was fun. It’s a cool device if it worked perfectly!
This thread is a serious bummer to read. I’m sorry to hear so many have been dealing with problems with it.
Personally, I’ve been having a blast with my PTM and it’s replaced the M8 as my travel/work device at the moment. It’s not perfect—the large buttons only press in the middle, so pushing on the side means nothing happens—but overall it’s been a great fast way to work on music while I’m on the go. I still like the way the performance page is aligned with the buttons on the full-sized Tracker, and I miss the radio, but I’m liking this a lot more than I thought I might, and loving having stereo samples. I love the M8, especially its synths, but the Polyend Tracker workflow and performance page make this a little more for me.
it’s just them damn mushy buttons. I don’t mind the seams or anything.