Hello Fess - that's normal, don't worry about it. They have no function when they're not illuminated (either dim or bright), so there's no point in pressing them! They also serve to proceed through Banks and Pages when illuminated - depends what you're doing. You'll notice that many buttons don't light up sometimes - it's Montage's way of telling you they're inactive.

@Rod - not true. All buttons serve some function. Often the buttons assume different functions depending on the keyboard mode.

@Fess:
If you want to see the LEDs working, press the [LIVE SET] button. Since under LIVE SET, these buttons serve as page up and down - you can see that on the 1st page, the page down LED is illuminated (dim) and page up button is off. Press the page down, and you'll see the page up button illuminate dimly until you get to the last page - in which case the page down will no longer be illuminated.

They operate in a similar manner during the [CATEGORY SEARCH]

While editing an individual PART, the same two buttons (MUTE and SOLO) will affect the "SOLO" designation. for me, "MUTE" turns off SOLO and "SOLO" turns it on.

What you will find, in general, is that the behavior of the LEDs is not always consistent. Most of the time, a dim LED means you can press that button to do something and a bright LED means something about that button is selected. However, there are lots of cases where buttons are able to be pressed (and will take action if pressed) and will have the LED as OFF.

Hey Rod and Jason, thanks a lot for clearing that up for me. I'm really trying to figure it out on my own but I get lost in just exploring without hitting the manual-even though it's right in front of me on a monitor screen:D

Anyway, still wrapping my head around this beautiful beast!

Thanks again fellas.

Hi Fess,

They are MUTE and SOLO buttons when the context is for them to mute or solo either a Part or Element/Operator, at other times they are Bank and Page Up/Down buttons. You need to envision these by the role they are performing at the moment, least you think they are inconsistent. Yes, they can appear so if you pay no attention to the current front panel function selected. They are context sensitive.

With time, you begin to make sense of the buttons, and their role at the time. When the [LIVE SET] grid appears in the screen, they are not [MUTE/SOLO] buttons, know that they are [Bank/Page Up/Down] buttons, begin to refer to them that way.

When you press [CATEGORY SEARCH] you'll notice the words are written in blue, many never notice the 'context', but once in Category Search the button that at other times is [PART SELECT 1/1] is not referred to as that but is now the "Piano" Category button. It is written in blue right by that button.

The Mute/Solo are not Mute/Solo while in Category Search, they are navigation buttons for the data in the screen. Context sensitivity. The buttons roles change depending on the function selected - the principal functions are:

[PERFORMANCE (Home)] - you can opt for "Performance Control" or "Part Control"
[LIVE SET]
[CATEGORY SEARCH]

[EDIT] - you can edit on the overall (upper) COMMON/Audio level of the architecture... or drop to the individual Part level of the architecture. A Performance can have 16 Parts. The upper Common/Audio parameters are overall, but you can select any one of the sixteen and drop into editing just it's components. Again the front panel buttons are context sensitive.

Take your time, their roles are consistent based on the context. Once oriented these will become familiar. But take the time to start to refer to them within their proper context. The ARP SELECT buttons become ARP ON/OFF buttons... once you can see how and understand when that happens, you've taken a big step in visualizing your front panel.

The lights can make navigating the Montage easy, once you understand its methodology. And once you "see" the context, it starts to make more and more sense.

@BM:

The stated inconsistency did not relate to the different modes of these particular LEDs (meaning how the buttons may change modes depending on the context). The inconsistency with LEDs is in the conventions that are adopted for the LED brightness levels. Sometimes one convention is adopted and sometimes another convention. Again, NOT having to do with the operation of the buttons and how they change - but more to do with what "if OFF" means vs "if DIM" vs "if BRIGHT".

In general, you can say if an LED is illuminated - that means you can touch it and it will do something. However, you cannot always say this. For example, the cursor keys can often scroll around and they're never lit to indicate this. [EXIT] is often an option, but it's never really lit. Although the record and play buttons below the superknob will shortcut to the Recorder - they are not illuminated dimly to show you can press them to do something. The [TONE] [EQ/FX] and [ARP/MS] and [ASSIGN] buttons are not dimly lit (when deselected) to show you can press those to change modes.

There are lots of other buttons which do dimly light to show you could press them to do something - it's just not consistent. How the buttons "guide" you, for the most part, is great - and it would be better if the policy was more fully baked meaning one could say "all buttons that are not lit show they will not do anything if pressed". Instead, this policy of what dim vs off vs bright means is inconsistent leading to not "trusting" what "OFF" means - or, sometimes, being mis-cued that there is not an option to press a button when there actually is.

It's not the end of the world - just another thing to be aware of - not to trust the LED brightness has any meaning because there are lots of exceptions to the general conventions. Kind of similar to if in a windowed operating system, if most windows had the "X" to dismiss the window on the upper-right-hand corner (like Microsoft Windows 10) - but every 5th window, the "X" to dismiss the Window was on the lower-left-hand corner. It'd make documentation and usage more convoluted although people would "get accustomed" to this quirky nuance. I vote for consistency - but realize the relative low priority on such a thing now that the cattle is out of the chute.