Not sure whether the faders were already faulty when they were purchased. I actually read elsewhere that they are perfectly capable standard components (although surely not fancy or heavy duty).
The more I think about it the more I’m convinced it was improper bulk shipping of the assembled units from the plant to the TE warehouse. Let’s say that at some point they stacked the super slim boxes one on top of the other without any padding - or even with some padding - after a certain amount of boxes are stacked, the ones on the bottom are going to be crushed by the weight and the fader is the part that sticks out and gets all the weight. And the failure rate would be maybe 30%? the six units on the bottom of a 20 box pile will be damaged.
And you can’t even say “let’s stack them horizontally like books on a shelf” cause there’s no assurance the shippers will handle the boxes properly. The solution - besides a completely redesign packaging - would simply to pack less boxes with more padding, which would lead to - you guessed it - even slower fulfillments…
I’m probably wrong on the following. It’s all suppositions, hearsay and personal experiences. So take that with a hefty grain of salt.
In my years as a QC inspector, through the use of QRQCs, I learned the hard way that mistakes like these have many factors.
In this case, I think everyone helped identify the culprits that make the EP-133 the misshap it became. Namely :
- cheap, not so sturdy faders
- cheap materials for a badly designed packaging
- shipping method
- cheap fader cap with a slightly too tight fit
- cheap speaker with a loose assembly (probably so the assembly robots don’t crack the plastic case when tightening the screws)
- plastic flashes around the edges of the pads
Easy enough to identify, probably a bit of a pain to fix. More so in the middle of restocking, RMAs and Xmas promos.
For the sake of the discussion, let’s not even address software bugs.
Now, the question at hand.
Do they have enough stock? Probably enough so they can restock the EP-133 and some more EP gear.
Is there a risk to have an EP develop hardware failure in the next months, year? Probably. It’s already happening, in a sense. But the fact that the components are not premium and the product is cheaply designed (the plastic screen protector being scratched easily, the fader transport not protected at all, the tight fit of batteries, etc) will probably mean an easy wear on heavy use. At least.
Can TE make something good out of it? Probably. But it’s a risk they took when pricing the device and thinking ahead. They probably wanted to have enough supplies so they could not have stock issues.
I’d say, in general, TE has now officially a track record of issues on every gear.
They are a boutique shop with a somewhat little team. And they have adopted a philosophy that puts customers in some kind of weird place - kind of a Alpha team (as opposed as Beta teams). Customers kind of make the QC inspection for TE.
And with that EP-133 release, they probably exposed themselves to many more customers than ever before. Good move at its core. But with such a botched release, they finally put a good dent in their brand.
New customers and old customers are now talking to themselves about the TE brand. And there is a consensus, for once : TE effed up real bad. Poor to non-existent communication, cheap components and poor design (both for the packaging and the unit), half baked software (units wiping themselves out, numerous little bugs and weird omissions, etc). TE has now a reputation for unreliability, understaffed CS and cheap gear with somewhat of a hefty price tag.
I’m guessing their next release will be important, now. Either the first nail in their coffin or the start of a new day at TE.
Anyways, I think we all need, as customers, to ask ourselves these questions and now be careful when purchasing TE gear. Cause as of now, the trust factor is low. And for good reasons.
Again.
Very subjective opinion, here. Personal bias all over this post.
Only TE knows what’s what.
But it’s a great thing some customers try to make sense of the mess they won’t address.
I’m curious about what other people think about it.
I think there’s a difference between cutting costs (to sell a product at a low price) and using cheap components. There’s nothing cheap about the packaging, in my view, but they obviously designed it to be as slim as possible. With the same exact materials they could have designed a slightly thicker box that would have protected the fader. Of course, a slimmer package saves you something on shipping (but it’s really pennies), so I don’t see that as the main motivator. I think it’s more a case of form over function.
Regarding the damage on the fader during installation: we are actually not sure how many people damaged the fader while installing the knob, there are actually more reports of DOA faders than broken by the users (by the way on the Elektron forums someone from TE has described their testing procedure for faders and the chances of them being faulty at the assembly stage look extremely slim. botched shipping seems way more likely the culprit).
But even then: the problem of the fader cap is that they cut costs by having 4 identical knobs to be fitted on two different kinds of stems: three cross shaped ones for the volume, x and y and one for the fader, which is a different shape and comes embedded in a component bought in bulk. Again: nothing overtly cheap in the knobs themselves (or even the fader itself), only cost cutting in putting together the system.
I guess people don’t realise how much effort goes into producing hardware, and because of the brand recognition TE, a unequivocally small company, gets compared with the product quality we expect from brands with thousands of employees.
But what we are really buying from TE is not world class build quality or expensive materials, we are buying their take on how an electronic musical instrument could work, and that is so unique that we are (should be?) ready to accept the quirks and defects to be able to experience it.
Edit: I found the order cancellation form at the TE site, I cancelled my ep-133 order, I feel relieved.
If you get the chance to share a link, I think it might help other down the line!
Nice to see there are options
does anyone know if there is a way to view a numerical value for the current amount of pressure on the keys? i just wanted to see if i could associated a numerical value to how hard it “feels” to press
Hi @djcuvcuv, you could try my web based MIDI controller, it can log MIDI events, I imagine it’s sent as pressure information, although I’ve not checked. Here’s a link to a preset for this: MIDI Surf
PS It works best on a Chrome-based browser and Apple don’t like the WebMIDI standard, so it may or may not work on iOS.
I don’t know how I got to the order cancellation page. I believe I started at TE Support but I have no idea after that.
Most definitely a great info nonetheless!
Thanks for sharing.
fx punch in lpf(4,) hpf (5,) and tape stop(2) you can somewhat infer a value from the animations. maybe also using volume you can sorta figure it out that way. also the timing auto trigger. not perfect just some ideas. also rapid switching between the modes with shift system 300,301,302. has helped me get a better feel for it.
Has anyone else noticed the extremely noisy delay, or is it just my unit?
The delay is super glitchy sounding, sometimes stopping out of nothing and adding a lot of noise… anyone else?
i have not experienced this 
New firmware is posted for the KOII
https://teenage.engineering/downloads/ep-133
i just saw it! thanks for posting! has anyone installed the new firmware 1.1.1 for the ep133 and if so were there any new issues or anything notable?
Bump.
I installed last night, no hassle (using a Chrome-based browser on Windows). All projects were fine. The HPF and LPF on the fader is much more usable now, it felt like it used to have a linear frequency range rather than a logarithmic range.
thanks for bumping this i read it earlier and it had me pondering. i have not come across this however i dont have a sample that long so ill sample something long and get back to you
It’s still got my scratching my chin.
eg When in step sequencer mode (9.2 in the manual) and using the +/- keys to go through the sequence each pad with a sound on it lights up. Holding down shift allows the changing of velocity and duration of the that note, but not for a sample that’s been recorded in or added via the sample loading tool. The VEL (orange knob) shows but the DUR (black knob) doesn’t.
The manual states that a sample will play for the length of a bar but again this isn’t happening with a user sample. It’s cut short.
So either I’m still doing something wrong (again please help me with that) or there is a limitation that I’m unaware of.
Something that I don’t think is in the manual is that you can create a note tie in step sequence mode by holding record + pad and tapping “+” for as many steps as you want it to play, just the same as holding the pad while in live record mode. Probably only relevant in key or leg sound modes.
For me, if the sound is in one mode, I just need to play it on the first step and it plays through.
Was just testing with a sound recorded with the mic about 8s long and was able to play the whole sample.
Thanks Tylor. Using your example I still couldn’t get it to work in the project I was working on but when I added the sample (roughly 5 seconds long) into a new project it plays all the way through.
Thanks again