PUM have their qualities, but the logic disturbs me. I like the possibility to mangle the sample freely after recording. I can use PUM recordings in a Flex, but it is track consuming.
Anyway, that subject really interests me, so I’d like to investigate more, even with PUM, to give them a 2nd chance maybe!
So did you find a solution?
I can try if you want. If so could you tell me / sum up what you’d like to achieve?
Yes, @darenager pointed out that I needed to arm the SCR3 input for recording, I had omitted that part, I believe AB is always armed and that was what I have been using exclusively so far. I ignored ii’s off by default for the other 2 sources.
What I do here is having a live guitar or bass being mangled a bit like you do (and what I did in a video I posted some days ago) using a flex machine, rec trigs and track trigs plus p-locks , but when I stop playing the bass or the guitar, I still have a loop of the last few bars going on, seemlessly, continuing to feed the flex machine as if I never stopped playing. The way I set this up works perfectly: takes up two tracks but that’s fine: and I have a lot of cascading effects because I can mangle the pickup recording before it goes into the flex machine. I just got a hell a of a havoc out of my beautiful bass this way 
EDIT: I just can’t imagine what Stanley Clarke or Mark King could achieve with a Octatrack!
They are marginally better on the mkII thanks to the button labelling, but TBH I still find them a bit of a pain, sometimes the dreaded dub aborted error crops up even when I am certain there is no pitch modulation happening. Still, if flex machines had a dedicated overdub mode (rather than having to set SRC3 manually) then I wouldn’t have much use for PU personally.
I think PU are handy for easily building layered things, but then I tend to grab them from the audio editor for flex mangling, on the mkI I just found them a bit counter intuitive but possibly because the vague info in the manual, lack of practice with them and that confusing flow chart 
I still wish they had an undo.
rec trig + rec button (one of the three, the one you need armed for recording). EDIT: on MkII
EDIT: the recordings are initiated by rec trigs, so you need to arm manually, no footpedal used here. I use the footpedal and the combo rec for the pickup machine
You can totally do so: That little video I posted some days ago did exactly that, slicing included (but clicky). The method I’m trying out here uses up two tracks and is quite powerful. I happen to have a SP16 as well, and a Digitone, so that’s quite a lot of tracks at my disposal: so using two OT tracks to do something cool and stage-ready doesn’t bother me at all 
Highlighted rec sources when you hold a trig?
By default, INAB, INCD, SRC3 are activated so I don’t understand why you have to activate / deactivate them. Time waste for me.
A recorder trig defaults to sampling from all input sources. When in the RECORDING SETUP 1 menu, the source a recorder trig samples from can be seen by pressing the [TRIG] key of the recorder trig. The activated sources are indicated by inverted graphics in the LCD and by lit and LEDs. Deactivate a recording source by pressing [TRIG] + [AUDIO RECORD AB]/[AUDIO RECORD CD]/[MIDI].
I know, that’s what I did in that one :
Pickup loop, realtime mangling with a Flex resampling / playing that loop + Input A (guitar straight in OT).
Well, it weird because I just figured out these settings are bank-independant. Meaning that you can switch to a new blank bank but these settings will not be affected. Whatever you set here will become the default for the project.
Unfortunately this is a bug due to part change.
Bank change means part change.
Welcome to the dark side of OT.
Btw are you talking about the recording sources you set with knobs, or their activation by pressing the trig + rec buttons?
Pressing trig + rec buttons
In relation to the example that you shared (fantastic), as you commented the configuration was this:
It would sound the same with a Flex, but with PUM you have a permanent monitoring.
T1 = PUM Comp Eq
T2 = NEIGHBOR Filter Chorus
T3 = FLEX, Recording T2, played with pitch - 12
T4 = FLEX, Recording T2, Fx
T5 = FLEX, Recording T2, played with pitch + 12
T6 = FLEX, Recording T2, filters for “drums”
T8 = Master Fx Reverb
In this way, you record the loop in the Pickup and manipulate it from the Flex.
How would you do the same without the Pickup? Is it possible to do it with a Flex, controlling Rec / Play with a foot controller? (hands free)
The problem that I see him doing with Flex without PUM is that you have to arm the REC when you want to start recording (but if I have my hands on the guitar… I can’t re-arm) and then to continue playing on the loop or add more layers you would need 2 Flex, am I wrong?
You can use a one shot rec trig, arm it with the Control Change CC53 (REC ARM).
To overdub, rec also the Flex track (itself T1-T8 or CUE).
Other method : rec permanently with rec trig, play realtime for monitoring, change pattern to play and stop recording.
How do I do that while I’m playing the guitar? Change from pattern A to pattern B, for example?
That’s a bit like “how to emulate a pickup machine with a flex machine”. I don’t see the advantage, but I discover that the charm of the OT is that there are many ways to do the same thing and everone can design a workflow that suits his personal logic That’s probably why OT survived that long and will probably remain an all-time classic.
Send a program change.
Actually, I think it’s the opposite, because Pickups were created after.
You can overdub many times with Pickups.
With Flex, when you apply fx, it can get muddy / dirty after 15 / 20 overdub recordings.
Yes I think I had that without pitch mod, OT master clock. 
I don’t like the fact Pickups don’t play when I press Play button.
I think it’s possible to make an overdub undo with 2 Flex tracks and pattern changes.
It works with individual tracks.
Pickup machine double tempo
Same here OT was master, in fact no midi connected either which rules out any spurious midi data causing the issue.
I just made a test, apparently possible to make overdub with 1 Flex track with 7 undos. But it requires 8 patterns, 8 recorders and 8 coffees. 
Hey @Open_Mike!
Hah! Weren’t they supposed to not even exist before the play button was pressed?
