I Hate How Easy It Is to Wipe Off the Printed Labels on the Elektron Model:Cycles
I love my Mode:Cycles. I'm a huge sucker for the twangy, metallic snarl achievable with FM synthesis. The interface feels natural and intuitive to me which makes it my favourite piece of hardware to use and jam with. I'd really like to try a Syntakt or Digitone for some more possibilities but my jams are so basic as it is I don't think I'd fully utilise the powers of that better hardware.
Something I noticed with my Cycles is that the printed lettering around the buttons rubs away really easily. Even just brushing your finger across it to wipe dust away seems to physically remove some of the lettering. I've never really seen this on hardware before, it's like the printing method was poor or cheap.
I'm actually finding that the lettering around the playback controls and option buttons has almost entirely faded away, and I'm not a heavy user with thousands of hours racked up this thing, just a couple of hours here and there. It looks like it isn't just me either.
Related to this, I bought a couple of Model:Samples and I had hardware issues with both units. One the second example I received the print on the casing was severely misaligned, with the 1:4, 2:4 etc labels half underneath the wrong light!