As much as I sympathize with QA issues, the amount that have had reported issues seems pretty average. Thousands of these are around the world now, less than 100 are reporting fixable issues so far. But I’m glad the unit is made in a such a way that’s it’s entirely diy-repairable. Zero bugs is ideal, but it’s always a non-zero coefficient in my product manager brain.
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I think installing the fader knob causes the bend faderpins, so they need to address that. I remember pressing very hard because it didn’t go as easily as the other 3 knobs. At least now people know to be careful
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Yeah but if the user forgets he had this setting on, uses regular AAAs instead of rechargeables and then connects the USB-Port you get a nice little(!) explosion. The acid is likely to kill your users shiny sampler and more often than not the user will try to blame it on the manufacturer, sends it in and generates work for you thus shrinking your profit margin.
If have been employed at a company that made small niche electronics for professional use and the “professionals” would rip out cables or fry them with a wrong power supply and try to put the blame on us. Happens all the time and I can imagine it’s even worse with “normal” customers
The battery cover working as a screw tray while repairing makes this worthy of the name “teenage engineering” 
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I agree.
Beyond safe tech today, but would be v nice to put rechargeable AA/AAA in many machines and have them recognised and fed.
At $299, the KO II is not exactly an impulse buy, but David Eriksson, Teenage Engineering’s co-founder and hardware lead, says he hopes it can still appeal to people who just want to use it for fun. It’s meant to live somewhere between the Pocket Operators and the OP-1, the company’s iconic — and $1,400 — synthesizer.
That explanation, though, assumes a kind of roadmapping that Eriksson says was absolutely not the case. The KO II was created purely out of necessity. “It was kind of an insurance project when the chip crisis happened,” he says. Supply chains were hugely constrained during the pandemic, and even in the summer of 2022, the Teenage Engineering team couldn’t get some of the parts they needed to make the company’s other synths. So as an experiment and a hedge against further shortages, the team reversed their design process and essentially placed an order for a year’s worth of whatever parts they could find before actually deciding how those parts would fit together. The team also worked to set up a new production line in Barcelona, so they could control the whole process themselves.
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The Verge needs to hire an actual musician to write these kinds of articles. The title of that article is a bit embarrassing…it’s not a synthesizer, folks.
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unless sampling is the simplest form of synthesis
Can someone summarize what needs to be done? I’m assuming a couple wires need to be soldered or pressed back into their locks
The traffic volume on this thread is crazy!
Just popped in to see if “Fadergate” was still a thing, but now I see there’s also a “Speakergate” reference! Hopefully these problems are affectingly only a tiny fraction of actual units…
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I don’t know why, but Elektrons Battery Handle desaster came to my mind
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To me it seems like it’s one of the most problematic music gear launches in terms of hardware failure. I never before saw that many users report broken devices right out of the box. And even if the rate is about average there are quite a few issues that enough people have with their new TE-133’s. Faders, speakers, knobs, power buttons, software glitches…
Don’t want to speak all negative about it. I really dig the workflow and want to own one in the future. Usually i’m one of the early adopters but this time my finances wouldn’t allow it. The reports about broken devices are the only things which keep me from regretting not getting one right away. Would love to play with one right now.
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or leading the charge in aftermarket mods…
- iphone spec speaker
- luxury fader
- recharging battery
this simple machine hardware and plastic was built for such mods
Packed mine up to return and can clearly see indents in the cardboard when they have been strained and then I noticed can see points of strain in the outer packaging plus it is shrink wrapped meaning a constant pressure on the left side knob and fader. My volume knob was also looser than the other two.
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Yeah, 2k posts in 1 week… I think that’s a record. Somebody prove me wrong
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I was sure my play button was restarting the pattern from the beginning of bar 1 when there was more than one bar, but now it’s starting at the beginning of whichever bar it was stopped on.
I want the play button to always start from the first bar. Am I dreaming…did this never work like this…or did I accidentally change something. No sign of this in the manual.
Finally got my ups tracking info ordered direct from TE…I chased them the other day they said ups next to them are very busy so struggling to get stuff scanned in….
I’ve already accepted it might be bust… accepting the worst to avoid the crushing disappointment…
For those that want to fix slider and not return but aren’t good at soldering. Just take it to any local guitar tech, they’ll sort it no prob for cheap fix.
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SHIFT + PLAY will accomplish what I want. I may have been drawing memories from other devices?
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12 posts/hour, every hour, for the past 7 days!
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