Longtime OT user but I have never really messed around with PU Machines very much, I primarily use Flex Machines for all my sampling and that works great. However, I started working on a little project with a friend and it seemed like a good opportunity to expand my OT knowledge.
I’ve got the basic PU Machine workflow down using the RecAB & RecCD buttons, but as I’d like to use these to record some guitar and I don’t have a footswitch I’m trying to find a way to use Rec Trigs and I’m having some difficulty making it do what I want.
Basically I want to set a one-shot Rec Trig to sample a 2-bar loop that will set the overall tempo for the project. One it records the loop I want it to immediately go to Playback mode, not overdub. Essentially I want to use it like a Flex Machine but with the added ability to set the overall tempo.
I’m encountering a couple of issues with this, the first one being that even a one-shot Rec Trig causes the PU Machine to constantly record- it goes right into Overdub mode. This seemed to be the expected behavior but I’m curious if there is a workaround to make it go into Playback mode. I have tried placing another one-shot Rec Trig at the end of my pattern that is locked to the RecCD function but that doesn’t work, and this brings up another issue.
The second, and perhaps bigger issue, is that if I place a Rec Trig on a PU Machine I can no longer use the RecAB & RecCD buttons to control the machine. I don’t know if this is a bug or expected behavior. Basically, if I start a recording with a Rec Trig (one shot or repeating) I can no longer manually trigger replace mode, playback or stop using the Rec buttons. So in practice this means if I use a one-shot Rec Trig to start recording my loop I’m stuck in overdub mode permanently until I use the transport buttons to stop the whole pattern.
This is annoying as a decent workaround would be to start recording with a trigger, play through my loop, and when it goes into overdub mode I can just manually put it into playback mode as I’m done playing my guitar part. No problem in theory, but this does not work…
As with many things on the OT that I’ve discovered over the years, there is probably a way to do this that I’m missing, or a menu setting I need to change, but the loss of button functionality while using a rec trig is a bigger problem. Any thoughts?
Also, as a side note, I have found that when I’m manually recording using QRec set to PLen on a PU Machine it seems to follow the Master length, not the pattern length of the track the machine is on. My Master track length is usually 64 steps whereas my individual tracks are different lengths, however recording only begins when the entire 64 steps end, not the 16 or 32 that the individual track length is set to. This behavior is not reflected in Flex Machines, when using QRec set to Plen they follow the individual track length as expected. Is this a bug or expected behavior for PU Machines?
(Using a trusty MKI OT with the 1.40A FW)