Am I right in assuming there's no wet/dry balance for system effects ( chorus/reverb.) I only see send/return. So does that mean you can never shut off the original signal? ( Maybe this is the norm in the send/return paradigm borrowed from mixers.) What would be comparable to say a 50/50 balance between the original signal and the chorus and/or reverb processed signal?

There is a way to control the original signal (Dry Signal) completely separately from the signal that is routed (SEND) to the System Effect and RETURNED to the main L&R Output.

If, for example, you wanted to return 100% Wet signal you could completely turn the Dry signal to 0 for any individual PART, then only the SEND to the REV and CHO (SystemEffects) would be available at the main L&R Output. Then the RETURN LEVEL from the System Effects would be completely Wet signal and in control of what you heard from that Part.

You find the DRY LEVEL parameter as a PART parameter (Performance and Mixing modes)
Press [EDIT]
Press the PART number [1]-[16]
Press [F1] VOICE
Press [SF2] OUTPUT
the SEND to the System Effects and the DRY LEVEL are found here. The DRY LEVEL typically is set to full 127. But when you want to return or monitor just your reverb return, for example, you can reduce the DRY LEVEL to do so.

You find the RETURN LEVEL for the REV and CHO (System Effects)
Press [EDIT]
Press [COMMON EDIT]
Press [F5] EFFECT
Press [SF1] CONNECT
Here you can follow the signal flow and find a separate Return amount from each processor block, and a pan control.

The Returned signal contains a combination of all signals Sent via the Part Send control, and is "post" the processor. The DRY SIGNAL takes a more direct path from source to the main L&R Output, and it's separate LEVEL control acts to accomplish what you are requesting.

Hope that helps.

I will try this, thanks 🙂

Motif is the easiest to use synth I own, until I forget stuff like how there's a separate edit for the part and the voice. It makes sense, I guess. But it's not always obvious to me where to look in spite of having owned a few Motifs. For example, logically where would I assume the mono/poly mode is - voice or part? I would have assumed voice, but maybe it's flexibility. Having mono/poly in the part let's a pattern or performance to have it's own setting, as needed, without having to have a mixing voice saved.

Yes, some of the things are curios but there is a reason. The setting MONO/POLY is logically a Voice parameter. And so it is found in VOICE mode, but when you have a multi-timbral synth you can individually set some Parts as mono while others are poly. When MIDI (particularly GM) resets a multi-timbral tone engine/sequencer it sets all Parts to POLY mode, all volumes to 100, all Pan to Center, etc., etc., MONO/POLY can and is set either via inserting a command in the track data for the specific Midi channel or by storing it as a Part parameter where the tone engine has such memory... As is the case here, you can store mono/poly as a Part parameter, (per Part).

By convention, in MIDI (which is a series of conventions adopted in 1983) the nominal setting for a new sequence defaults all channels to POLY mode, if a monophonic voice is recalled you may to have to set it to mono. A mono Voice will survive the transfer from Voice to Part, however... If a Voice in Voice mode has the PB RANGE set to +6/-6 when the voice is placed in a Mix the PB RANGE is reset to the MIDI default +2/-2, if you want to set the PB RANGE differently you will need store that setting to the PART or copy it from Voice to the Part.

There are several of these type of Voice mode parameters that are reset or changed to some other value when you place them in a PART. Some because of MIDI convention... and some because they are simply "offset" parameters. For example, the Cutoff and Resonance Knobs found in Voice mode do not control a single filter... They instead represent an offset value added to or subtracted from each of the eight individual Element Filters! So if you "edit" the Voice in Voice mode via the "quick access" knobs, realize you are adding/subtracting values from the eight Element's individual filters. The same goes for the knobs and the individual Element components. Storing these offsets in Voice mode does not carry over when the Voice is placed in the PART, *unless* you mark "parameter with voice" item when selecting the Voice for the Part. This copies all the associated functions (like Arps) and offset parameters to the PART.