Couple of noob questions

OP-1
#1

Hi all, please forgive me if I’m jumping the gun here a bit, but I’ve had the OP-1 for a couple of hours and there are a couple of issues I’d like to bounce off the forum:

1) One of the first things I did was to update the firmware and I can’t seem to see any presets at all - I’ve watched a bunch of run-through videos on youtube and it seems that there should be loads of presets available as starting points and I have none in my list, other than half a dozen in the sampler module. Everything else has nothing under it. Same for the effects section.

2) Is it normal that the knobs are a little off-centre? It’s probably just my OCD but my knobs are all off and it troubles the aesthete perfectionist in me. The knobs do seem a bit scratchy too, and, I’m guessing this is normal, the resolution on a knob turn is very low/steppy.

3) Is it normal that the tape should be right at the end of the reel on first use? I spent 15 mins or so wondering why I couldn’t record anything to the tape and then realised it was because it was at the end of the reel and needed rewinding. Does this indicate that the unit may have been used before? Seems a weird starting point for the factory settings.

3) The speaker really does sound like crap, right? I’ve read enough reports of the OP-1 speaker to know that this is normal, and of course I wouldn’t expect much from a speaker of it’s size, but gosh it’s pretty much unusable. The speaker on my iphone is better and that’s tiny by comparison.

Thanks for any illuminations on any of these, sure this won’t be the last time I defer to the forum!
#2

Here is my stab at answering some of the above:


1. When selecting a synth engine, press ‘com’ and one of the numbered keys should bring up the presets.

2. Mine are a fraction off centre by maybe 1mm, I think a little room is normal. As for the stepping, I find thats more to do with the engines than the pots themselves but I might be wrong in this.

3. I really can’t remember how the tape was set up on mine, that isn’t the greatest default setting but you can set start and end points anywhere on the tape.

4. I’ve really never used the speaker. I guess its a nice-to-have but a speaker of that size is never going to do anything great. I normally do everything on the OP-1 with cans.
#3
1. When selecting a synth engine, press 'com' and one of the numbered keys should bring up the presets.

I'm sure he meant "SHIFT" instead of "COM".
#4

^ Thanks for the correction, that is what I meant to say.

#5

The colored knobs are encoders not pots, hence their steppiness. Though you could get some that run smoothly, having distinct steps makes it easier to do menu-selection kind of things. On some parameters you can make finer adjustments by holding down shift while turning the encoder btw.

#6

Doesn’t shift (or stop?) plus < or > go to the beginning/ end of tape?

#7
  1. A little yes, had the same thing

    3. Haha, I’m glad I’m not the only one that thought his OP-1 was broken because of that!

    3-2. I don’t know, it’s pretty shit but not completely unusable for me. I like to set up a melody or rythm on the speaker and tweak/redo everything later with headphones or on in a DAW.