Hmm. Yeah. Even if it did get re-engineered though, an Octatrack is an Octatrack. Like the DTII, it doesn’t look entirely different from a DT.
So, maybe they do re-engineer the internals, add modern day effects, tidy up some things people have been asking for, add Overbridge, maybe add some speedy sampling workflow tweaks that are more modern, and give it all the new page, sequencer updates that have been coming out. Decouple pickups from the BPM to make it asynchronous. Make it polyphonic. The list goes on.
Say they do all that, I think it could still look basically exactly like the Octatrack mkii, except with maybe 8 page LED’s. The faceplate is already full to the brim with buttons and combos, but, as they showed with the Digitakt and Digitone, Elektron weren’t shy from moving a button or two to different places on the machine.
But I think if anything is lost, if anything doesn’t work in a way that the original Octatrack did, well, let’s just say Octatrack users wouldn’t be very happy. I think it’s cool to improve and add to the Octatrack, but removing features would turn it into something that wasn’t really an Octatrack anymore. And that’s cool, its just a new thing.
But can you imagine? We give you this and this and this, but in the process you lost x and y and z. It would be ecstacy and woe hand in hand.
Because the Octatrack’s special sauce is its ability to completely surprise you. It’s unique Frankenstein combination of elements is what makes it make things you had no idea how you made. And while for some people that might be a source of confusion, for others it’s a thing of wonder.
Modern Elektron boxes have been somewhat more straight up and down, it does what it says on the tin. But with the OT, you can really get lost in there, which I think is a good thing. Take anything away from that mix, and it might wind up a more simplified version of itself.