I thought I had this right but apparently NOT... What setting in the theme pref's or in the icon png's, controls the color for the area that the main tcp toolbar icons sit on? It seems to be a diff color than the same area of the floating toolbars.... in the main tcp it is quite darker for me.... I hope this is not some gradient thing thanks for some info from one of the theme masters :)

Haha, I fell foul of this one. It used to be toolbar_bg.png for both, but the floating one is Main Window Background (colour, not an image). Steve Oopsy, just checked the theme element finder and both showed toolbar_bg.png as the backgrounds, yet they are quite different, there may be some transparency with another colour, I'll get back on this. EDIT #2. It looks as if there is a swap to the rendering order, with the toolbar .png above the tcp rendered after the background colour, while the floating toolbar is rendered before. Whatever is happening, with the floating toolbar the colour "main window background" takes precedence.

it's really strange 

thanks for this help Bradley... it's suddenly become an issue for me because of something I'm trying to do with a new icon set.... now, I see in some themes, where icons don't really appear as buttons but just as the graphic of the icon, that there must be a way to control that main tcp toolbar background color... What I see happening, is that the floating toolbar background [for what I'm working on] is the color I expect, BUT the background for the tcp main toolbar is several shades darker... the problem this makes for me, is that I'm making some icons whose background color are those of the floating toolbar background color... so they work perfectly there... but when used in the tcp main toolbar, their own icon backgrounds show up as a lighter patch of color... most irratating!:mad::confused: I wish there was a really clear guide to what each and every theme item did and where it gets used.... I mean, sure, I can figure out most of them but in some cases it's really not so obvious

ah got it 

thanks again.... yes it is toolar_bg.png.... now I'm good to go with the next steps.... hooray... back into photoshop for a week..hahahaha

or maybe longer. 

could be a long project... got this concept for icons that seem to be more sort of animated as you roll over or clk them.. this one little text would be a toggle to show or not show the master trak... the image is a track... well a paw print really, but maybe no one else would know that... hahaha... the dark background color is not seen in the toolbar... since it is the background of the toolbar... I must be crazzzzzzzY!

one other question then 

OK.... so far moving along... but still can't seem to control or isolate what is the background color in the tcp behind where the wav or midi items show... [arranger area of the window].... is this a png also???