I purchased a Syntakt at the end of October.
Great machine, love it, but it developed a serious screen issue after a week or so, the screen flipped out and showed nasty black and white horizontal lines, like the horizontal pixels had stopped working in places or just displaying the wrong tones.
Took it back to the shop, and exchanged for a replacement.
However now the new second unit has just done the same thing after a couple of weeks!!!
Very, very frustrating and annoying. Going to have to sort that one out now.
And then wait for the replacement to go againâŚ
I have seen several other posts elsewhere with the same fault. I will be on my third unit soon, whatâs going on?
I trusted Electron products, built like a rock, but its being seriously tested now.
I have a Digitakt too and it has performed flawlessley.
and does the screen render like this with power alone (and no USB)
itâs striking that an issue like this happens twice to the same user (and tbh, i have seen those other occasional âghostâ lines, which are normal, but never anything so extreme like this for any screen)
using them with the original power supply that came with the syntakt? not the original one from your digitakt? if i remember correctly, older digitakts came with smaller power supplies, 1A as opposed to 2A, which is what syntakt needs and which i believe is also shipped with digitakts today.
I think they all shipped with 2A power supplies, but the minimum requirement printed on the Chassis was different, the Syntakt needs a bit more than 1A, but only during boot
Sure, Iâve been using it with the Syntakts power supply, not the Digitakts.
I understand that they were different. Thanks for the thoughts, very odd, looks like perhaps a faulty batch of screens to me, maybe.
Spoke to the shop, they said they have sold hundreds, very few problems reported, some with lcd lights. Very odd to have the same problem twice with me, thought I must be doing something wrong, but heaven knows what. But I have seen pictures of other screens with same problem.
If it also looks like this when powered-up at the store, my guess would be that itâs a bad batch of displays that was not caught by QC - or perhaps thereâs a trim pot for the display which has not been adjusted correctly.
These types of OLED display do show some kind of âline bleedingâ artifacts even when working correctly:
Ya sounds like a bad batch. Best to contact Elektron directly I think, the retailers will just keep replacing it with units from the same batch if my experience with early adoption of Rytm MK2 is any indication.
You mentioned Overbridge, do you power off after a session or does it stay connected and powered on? Have you verified that the screen goes to sleep after the dormant period as itâs supposed to? Is it possible the Syntakt is constantly receiving some data via USB and is not powering the screen down?
The white OLED are supposedly more sensitive to developing screen issues on the Syntakt and MKII units when the screen stays on for long sessions over shorter lifespans than the yellow OLED units. Some people using a direct connection to OB never power them off, which is normally a non-issue, unless the screen doesnât dim out as itâs intended to.
I wouldnât dismiss the idea that there was a bad batch, especially since both units came from the same retailer, but I agree that the same customer receiving one with the same problem twice is slim, especially since it manifested itself after a week or so both times.
It seems more likely that even if it is a weak batch of screens, the same conditions could have aggravated it both times. Thatâs not to say youâre in any way to blame for that, but just proposing the idea that there may be more going on here than a defective OLED.
