I came up with a nice “piano” after some experimentation. Tone machine, colour: 1.00, Shape 22, Sweep 14, contour 0, decay 46. Pitch 12.0 (sounds better in this register) reverb 53 in my case.
Well, it’s still quite digital saturation. I have to say - not a big fan of the clipping added when you crank the volume - it sounds more like bad digital signal than soft clipping from analog gear… I tend to prefer it more clean and maybe boost later in post or add some more sophisticated distortion from iPad (eventide) or analog heat in hw.
Are you talking about volume+dist or the track level? You need to turn down the track level if you turn distortion up, otherwise it clips in the output and sounds like digital clipping. (That can sound cool for some kinds of music, too, but it’s not what I’m talking about.)
My guess is that the drive is some sort of nonlinear function (e.g. hyperbolic tangent), which is essentially like easy analog modeling saturation. I could be wrong about that, though. To my ears there’s a big difference in how e.g. Kicks or Tone machine basslines sound if you add some distortion, and it’s definitely not clipping.
Vol+dist is what I mean, yes. Indeed it’s not exactly clipping but still - not a big fan of it. Much more prefer the overdrive on Digitone for example. Maybe I need to delve deeper into it as well (having the unit literally since couple of days).
Since you’ve only had it for a while, my guess is that you’re mistaking the digital clipping at the track output for the distortion function. The signal distorts when you crank the overdrive up, yes, but it’s due to both the distortion effect AND the track level clipping at the output, so you need to turn the track level down to avoid the harshness.
It happened to me, too, at first. I’ve noticed that on the Cycles, you have to be more careful with levels than with e.g. the Digitakt. (I’ve only used the Digitakt, but I assume it might be similar to the Digitone in this respect.) There’s not as much headroom.
I made a comparison with a long bass note with lots of distortion (and track level set to low) and with no distortion, and the difference visible on the Ableton scope is that there’s really nice high harmonics there, so the sound is a lot fatter. Definitely no clipping whatsoever.
Set LFO on DIST, and set DIST to 0, and shape to ENV (or whatever you want) then you can use the Fade parameter as an attack setting if you set it negative. I’ve used this to get rid of the clicky attack on the kick and chord machines. All the clickyness everywhere gets to be a bit much, so I’m very happy I discovered this trick.
In combination with a slow ENV shape you can make a decent classic EP. Sweep on chord = 0 or 1 or 106, slightly higher DIST for some growl.
You can p-lock settings in the LFO Setup menu? I thought it was static…?
Damn, I think you’re right. Looks like this trick isn’t as useful then, when you can only have one glide length.
Thanks for prompting me to try this again. I found it a bit finnicky to set up though, and experimented with Pitch and FTUN as destinations to tune in the right envelope. For envelopes that have no sustain but decay only (GATE off) having a slow attack combined with too-fast decay will limit the max height of the envelope. Having found the ‘right’ envelope I then switch the destination to vol/dist.
I will experiment some more but at the moment I’m finding it easier to set up slow attack the other way, E.g. LFO -> ENV then negative depth on VOL/DIST (check LFO Fde is at 0) , also VOL/DIST set low perhaps. Mul x8, Dep -60.0, Vol/Dist 60, LFO SPD 24
For slow attack done with fade, I’ve discovered the easiest way to set this up is avoiding LFO Wave ENV, and using Square instead, with LFO Rst on and (crucially) LFO speed set at 0 so that the LFO does not start to cycle. Combine that with Vol/Dist low or zero, LFO Dest of Vol/Dist (depth say at 50) and LFO Fde at about -30 is a good place to start experimenting
Has anyone managed to dial in a sound that’s vaguely like a long ringing electric guitar tone … sort of open twang … maybe like a telecaster ?
Not specifically aiming to emulate a guitar … just something in that zone.
Recently got an M:C and now have a couple of days planned for getting to grips with it. I ambitiously set me as goal to perform a minimalistic, ambient AV show with it next week 
So I knew before hand that it doesn’t have a pattern+kit save structure like the older Elektron gear. From early explorations I’m sensing I might not vibe with that so well. Curious how you folks are working it. Say you have a set of patterns that use the same sounds and form a track together. When playing this live you might manipulate some sound parameters, then switch to another pattern. There will be a jump in those modded parameters, unless you revert to the saved state first. This is especially poignant when having a pattern chain going. At every pattern switch there will be jumps and you might end up with 4 or so patterns all with different sound parameters. I can see a creative use of that but I also like the good old kit way that preserves sounds over multiple patterns.
How are you folks dealing with it? Avoiding such cases altogether? Perhaps found creative uses for it?
FWIW, I have a “tone” version of each percussion machine saved as a preset, as a basis for finding more variations that can be used melodically.
The cycles is my first groovebox/sequencer, so I didn’t even realize I was having this limitation even though I do exactly what you said: I manipulate the sounds but then make sure to reset the pattern back to the saved state before changing patterns.
That would be an AMAZING firmware update to lock a kit to a bank
Don t hold your breath 
it s not on model:samples either so really a design choice by elektron.
Seems a fair comment. Nothing else is saved at bank level (?), so they might need to re-architect a lot under the hood, and figure out which button combos to use for save to bank, clear bank etc
I think pattern level was meant. Kit link saved with each pattern like on the bigger boxes.
Just realized that the Control all function works for moving the machines. So you can move all the tracks over one at the same time. This is truly the box that keeps on giving.
Not following this trick? Can you elaborate?