Reverb.com purchase. I rolled the dice. My purcahse policies aside, after initializing factory settings, move into looper mode, no midi cables plugged in. encoders are relevant to looper mode, in play mode as indicated by the bypass billboard, what am I missing plz?

What is the record lenght set at?  If you have the latest software (you might have to menu dive in the system mode to be sure), this will be on the DLYMIX knob.  It needs to be something larger than 0 secs obviously.  Since you bought it used, it might be worth just updating it fresh to be sure.  We can never really know what state it was sold to you in.