I can't believe I'm still writing about this more than a year after Theme Editor was introduced. I know you have your priorities with your updates, but the fact that you haven't addressed this in over a year makes me sad. The fact that a Cakewalker never ever replies to my comments on this issue makes me very sad. My subscription ran out with 2016.07. I've been waiting and watching every month since for this update fix. The fact that nothing is happening and you show no interest in fixing this highly trumpeted app which is basically useless because it breaks one of the most fundamentally important aspects of SONAR's UI, means my money stays in my pocket. 
 
Once again. any use of Theme Editor removes track strip colours. I cannot work with big projects without track strip colours. I have to use Mercury even though I would much prefer something that looks closer to Tungsten. I want darker strip colours but they don't work in Tungsten and as soon as you make any tweak to Mercury in the Theme Editor you no longer have strip colours. Why are you not seeing that this is a major bug. Please give some indication that you are bothered. 

Im all for colored strips as well. I miss them a lot.
But don't you think your being a bit dramatic here ?

No. One year on is plenty of time for Cakewalk to at least acknowledge the issue. I'm a loyal user of nearly 20 years. I love SONAR. I'm frustrated at their lack of even a "hey, we hear ya, looking into it". 

Maybe it is very complicated and would cost a lot of time.
But I also want to have colored strips.
I also work 20 years with Cakewalk, and the Theme Editor is only half a thing and not finished.
I would accept it, if Cakewalk informs us - they will work on it - or it is not possible.
 

Cakewalk have talked about this on the forum at various times. Broadly, they seem to take the position that coloured strips are a feature of the Mercury theme, not a missing feature from other themes. I find that odd myself, but hey. They definitely don't regard it as a bug.
 
I agree it would be nice to have. I don't use coloured strips on every project, but I use them often enough that it rules out using themes for me.

The fact that they don't want coloured strips in Tungsten is their choice. Totally the wrong choice but hey!
It's a bug because you cannot edit the Mercury theme at all without coloured strips disappearing. This is a serious code mistake that needs fixing.

It's perhaps not desirable that colored track strips are only in Mercury, but it's not a bug. I've asked about it and apparently, it's not an easy change. If it was simple to do, Cakewalk would have done it.
 
I must say that some of the themes users are designing are very cool...I think that's a reasonable tradeoff for not being able to color track strips. I do hope colored track strips become available for non-Mercury themes, but it doesn't interfere with my music-making. FWIW using large track icons with solid colors makes it easier to parse tracks compared to the little colored strips.

Thanks for the comment about Track Strip colors. This is something we have discussed making possible in both Mercury and Tungsten. The changes to accommodate it are not trivial and require redesign of how the console view looks due to how we display text. We were able to create a pseudo tint in Mercury because the Strip background is light and we can blend a little color without making the text in the strip unreadable. This same approach did not work for Tungsten and so that feature is not available through the Tungsten theme or Theme editor currently. We are still considering this for a future update. For now though, this feature will only be available from the Mercury theme.

So, should I venture to say the loyal customer (OP) of 20 years, who's subscription has expired, is no longer a loyal customer?
 

Lance Riley [Cakewalk]
Thanks for the comment about Track Strip colors. This is something we have discussed making possible in both Mercury and Tungsten. The changes to accommodate it are not trivial and require redesign of how the console view looks due to how we display text. We were able to create a pseudo tint in Mercury because the Strip background is light and we can blend a little color without making the text in the strip unreadable. This same approach did not work for Tungsten and so that feature is not available through the Tungsten theme or Theme editor currently. We are still considering this for a future update. For now though, this feature will only be available from the Mercury theme.

Speaking as someone whose main motivation for upgrading to Platinum from X3 Pro was because the Tungsten theme finally allowed me to banish the drab grey and/or rainbow colours and finally allow me to return to a dark theme that had been missing since 8.5, can I please ask that it you ever do this colour strip thing again that is an option. Having waited so long for you to correct the previous backward step please, please don't ruin it again.