Ableton Forum

Just got my hands on a Push 2. To my surprise, the encoders (knobs) vary greatly in tightness...

1: Somewhat loose
2: Tight
3: Tight
4: Semi-tight
5: Extremely loose (and slightly wobbly)
6: Semi-tight
7: Semi-tight
8: Tight

Besides the obvious issue/annoyance with having to apply different force to different knobs, I'm a bit worried about durability. Considering the price, I find this pretty unacceptable.

Is this a general issue? What are your experiences?

My first Push 2 was roughly the same as yours, except encoder 4 had severe micro-jitter. So adjusting something with a large range, say, a frequency band for EQ8 was a nightmare - it would go up and down in values on its own.

Second Push 2, zero jitter and all encoders much tighter, except for 6 and 8, and encoder 1 had a "hump". If you turn it anti-clockwise, resistance would increase at one point during the rotation - creating a speedbump effect when turning. After taking off the encoder top I noticed it has a very slight bump at the side, which must rub against something slowing it down. I shuffled some of the encoders' tops about and minimised this to an extremely slight speedbump, but now encoder one is very loose. It functions perfectly fine though and does not hamper me in any way.

I'd guess most Push 2's have varying encoder tightness.

tedlogan wrote:My first Push 2 was roughly the same as yours, except encoder 4 had severe micro-jitter. So adjusting something with a large range, say, a frequency band for EQ8 was a nightmare - it would go up and down in values on its own.

Second Push 2, zero jitter and all encoders much tighter, except for 6 and 8, and encoder 1 had a "hump". If you turn it anti-clockwise, resistance would increase at one point during the rotation - creating a speedbump effect when turning. After taking off the encoder top I noticed it has a very slight bump at the side, which must rub against something slowing it down. I shuffled some of the encoders' tops about and minimised this to an extremely slight speedbump, but now encoder one is very loose. It functions perfectly fine though and does not hamper me in any way.

I'd guess most Push 2's have varying encoder tightness.

Thanks for your input. I tried taking off the tops as well, but the issue seems to be with the encoders themselves. I also found this on reddit (after the initial pad-talk) https://www.reddit.com/r/ableton/commen ... sh_2_pads/

My Push 1 's encoders are perfectly aligned when it comes to tightness, though generally a bit tighter.

I went to a local shop to test their Push 2 display model, and that one had the same noticable variation in encoder tightness, but differently distributed.

It's curious, that Ableton lets something like this get past quality control, considering the pricetag and focus on build quality. Could even be a screw, that just needs adjusting underneath each encoder, but I suppose it's bye-bye warranty, once you open it, so...

I've returned mine, but will try my luck with a new one. I really hope that it is not a general issue with Push 2, as it seems like a great controller.

Yeah I was just about to exchange the second one, but then decided at the last moment that I don't want to deal with the hassle, and that the third unit would also probably have some minor encoder issues. And I like using it too much to go for a full refund, so I've accepted it.

It is indeed strange that these high-end controllers have this large variance in encoder tightness. It is not something that will get broken in, unless all 8 encoders become very very loose - they're not gonna become tighter of course. That's not really a bad thing for me though as they function perfectly fine.

I guess the potentiometers (not quite sure if it is actually potentiometers underneath the tops) are each screwed in by gnomes of different strengths at the factory.

Mine are all the same level of feel. I got mine when they first announced in November.

Just thought I should mention:

Got my Push 2 delivered straight from Ableton yesterday.

All encoders are properly tight, no jitter, all very tidy.

My only issue is that there's a lot of pink in the white pads, but that was quite easy rectified with Push 1, so hopefully will be with this one.

Apart from that though, pretty happy so far

aha. Perhaps ours is from a specific wonky batch.

No pink pads though.

same problem here. Different resistance to rotation between the 8 encoders

tedlogan wrote: ↑

Tue Mar 22, 2016 7:16 pm

encoder 1 had a "hump". If you turn it anti-clockwise, resistance would increase at one point during the rotation - creating a speedbump effect when turning. After taking off the encoder top I noticed it has a very slight bump at the side, which must rub against something slowing it down. I shuffled some of the encoders' tops about and minimised this to an extremely slight speedbump

Thanks you for your post. I was very close to sending my new push 2 back, since one encoder had a pretty severe speedbump (excelent description btw)
Shuffling the knob caps fixed the problem completely

Glad it worked for you! Alas for me it hasn't. Jitter severe now. Fortunately, Ableton are willing to replace the unit for only 79 quid! They're gonna send me shipping stuff and everything, so that's all good.