I‘ve had the chance to look at a friend‘s Digitone and noticed that the lighting on the track buttons is different from mine. The whole button seems to be illuminated. On my DN, it’s mostly the font that’s illuminated.
So, is this some kind of hardware mod or are the track buttons on newer Digitones different than on older ones? I‘ve only seen two DN in real life so far and both are 2nd hand, so we can’t figure it out on our own. It looks a bit like someone has painted the inside of the buttons with something that shines when the button is lighted. I consider doing that myself if you know a good solution.
It’s hard to photograph. But definitely an improvement over the way track buttons are lit on my own DN. It’s a lot easier to see which track is currently selected when in global mute mode. It doesn’t fix the confusing lighting on DN track buttons, but makes it a lot better.
Hmmm, I’ve had a Digitone (in 2018) and a Digitone Keys (in 2020) and both had the ‘not so useful’ track indicators that seemed to just light up the T1/T2/T3/T4 writing. It was often impossible to see exactly what is going on and what tracks are muted/playing. Part of the reason I sold them both, some of the UI decisions were very often ‘form over function’.
Just checked on the Elektron website, and it has a close up of those 4 buttons and they still seem to be the same as I remember. Not the whole button lighting up.
Perhaps your friend got lucky!
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The picture is of your friends digitone? what is the manufacture date on yours? you should compare it against your friends. The year and week number are part of your sticker on the bottom with the serial number.
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here’s mine manufactured in 2020, as you can see the yellow track 2 button is very opaque even when selected, even compared to the other colors. I masked off the light from the other surrounding keys so you could make an accurate estimate of the brightness vs your own, these are the 4 tracks selected 1 to 4.
I mean yes it’s helpful to have more visibility but in my small opinion seeing the color more, ie less opacity, is an indication of a reduction in the quality or amount of the material used. It’s possible there is a change where the intent is to give more visibility but I wonder if there is really any advantage? hard to say. some consistency in the opacity of the keys would be more helpful to me but what do I know 
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This looks more like my Digitone, thanks. I will check for production dates later. I suspect there’s a mod on my friend’s DN (which is on the photo above). If it’s a production fail, Elektron should consider repeating that failure 
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It definitely helps that the whole button on his DN is brighter. It makes it easier to differentiate the button that is currently selected but not muted. I have no clear idea why that is, as DN track lights are so unintuitive that I couldn’t tell you what varieties there are and what they tell you.
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after through inspection of my relatively early production DN
my buttons are non consistant with how “glowy” they are
T2 and T3 are definitely more solid, but still have minor amount of glow with specific lights under them.
T1 and T4 are glow town most of the time.
i think its safe to assume that they supposed to be solid with no grainy glow, and that manufacturing was ironed out in the later years of production.
im going to order black buttons soon 
i realised that im not even perceiving what color they are anymore because its easier to remember what state each track is in, than to decyfer what they represent.
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