Is there a way to colour individual takes? I find that during studio work you frequently listen through a number of takes trying determine which ones to work with. Using colours would be a fast way to grade the various takes and then get rid of the ones uneeded for instance... T

"Free item positioning"! 

Well, as I discovered a solution myself I thought I'd mention it. In fact, going into Options - Preferences - Project - Defaults and checking "Free item positioning" solved this problem. And a whole lot more to be honest. Make sure to restart Reaper after checking it, that's what I had to do in order for it to work. As long as "Free item positioning" remains unchecked there is a lot of confusion and strangeness associated with takes and lanes. For me it was downright counter-intuitive, so I find it a bit surprising that "Free item positioning" isn't enabled by default... This has solved many headaches for me I think... T

Glad you found a solution. FIPM can be pretty confusing for people who are used to a standard "one track, one item lane" paradigm, so enabling this by default is probably not a good idea. That's why you can define it yourself as default in the project defaults. FYI, you can enable FIPM for each track individually via right-click menu on the TCP, no need to change the defaults and reboot if you use that only occasionally.

... and don't forget you can also save FPE tracks as track templates ...

Guess it depends on the workflow. However, if you like me do 10 takes, each take a different length, there will be splits all over the place, and you will immediately loose track of which lane belongs to which take...