Surely the first step is a conversation with the manufacturers. You don’t do user research by issuing heavily loaded polls on internet forums.
For a start the question is more nuanced than ‘do you like this thing’. Ignoring the fact that you will always get far more responses from those that are passionate about not liking than those that probably don’t really care either way (which will be most people, by the way).
We have threads from folks complaining thigns are too expensive levelled up against threads from folks complaining about QA. Product development is nuanced.
Maybe email Elektron. Ask them why they use it?
I bought fader caps not long ago and had the choice of coated or not. I chose coated. Much prefer the feel and I don’t live in a swamp.
After so many years, my Rytms rubber coated buttons are finally chipping and attracting particles. Sad that this will likely be the fate of my Syntakt too. Feels good at first but really interferes with long term value and resale. If an alternative coated button replacement was available, I would swap all of mine.
If you live in a dry climate and don’t have have corrosive and copious finger oils, this topic may not be relevant to you!
Just to be clear I do empathise with those that hate this stuff - it’s just there are already many topics here discussing that already - itt’s not a new grumble.
Yep. Coming from the guitar strings world I’ve always been well aware I should wash my hands before playing either way. But when mistakes happen or time takes its toll, swapping guitar strings is a breeze, compared to ordering all new buttons from Elektron and popping them in every few years. Seems wasteful to me too.
Or the MPC
If they would make a replaceable case for the LIVE, I’d order it right now, despite being broke.
I thought the stuff was nice when it first came on the scene. But after countless melted, now unusable mice…that were in great condition save for being untouchable…I just find it wasteful. I hate being wasteful. And throwing out perfectly good items that can’t be used because of this awful goo just makes me feel terrible.
The whole “just throw it away and get a new one” mentality is so bad.
or they could suck it up and offer replacements for that dropped ball
KM is selling their products with new casings of another material, no TPE finish. You can get these as spare parts for the Qunexus as well. I have successfully replaced the casing of my K-Board. No more sticky gunk
The pitch and mod wheels on my Axiom keyboard have gone awful, and I’ll need to try and clean them somehow soon.
If anyone hasn’t experienced PBT keycaps on a computer keyboard, common on good ‘mechanical’ keyboards now, then I recommend trying it out. They tend to have a lovely textured matte feel, and are really hard wearing, takes a long while for them to get shiny. The best thing Elektron could do IMO is to make and offer replacement sets of PBT buttons, and start putting them on newly made machines.
It always baffles me when expensive and otherwise very solidly built boxes have problems like this that could easily just be solved for minimal cost in the grand scheme of things.
It feels like planned obsolescence to me. At the end of the day, resale value goes down and more people buy new. You can’t tell me they’re not aware of that…
with light up buttons, i assume the button material is transparent for shine-thru then its masked for painting/coating. done this way for lesser cost vs more expensive double-shot keycaps process
Regarding cost I think it’s a question of scale, and given how Elektron reuses most of the buttons across different devices, and the fairly premium price point they have, I don’t think it would be at all unreasonable to ask for a bit of an upgrade in this department.
I don’t know exactly what the extra cost would be, but it would be a pretty small percentage of the total cost I think. Has to be worth it in the long term.
@natehorn the idea of starting the poll was to collate the experiences of people who have or have not a problem with TPE coating. The reason perhaps that some people have no problem with it whilst others very much do is because it is either not an issue at all or such an issue that it renders gear unpleasant to use or even unusable.
I think a poll will at least give an indication, of an albeit limited sample, size how widespread the issue is, or not.
Have ONE [insert something with the slightest amount grease/oil] and accidentally/inadvertently touch something coated…it’s over.
My keyboard keycaps feel like the day I bought them 15 years ago - they’re a lot more expensive than the TPE coated ones - a factor no doubt.