Thanks for looking in rbowser. You know I'm not a newbie - I do know what I'm doing here ;-)
The annoying thing is that this issue with the handles has been around since at least X1 (as can be seen in this thread) - and now, not only is it not fixed - there is a new added dimension to it! ;-)
I do like SONAR - but things like this just make me despair ;-)
Still, it's nice to have the guys in the forum to help out - because Cakewalk support is going nowhere. I don't even bother filing those defect reports because when they eventually get back to you, the problem has either evolved, or you've moved on - and probably discovered new problems ;-)
I only discovered this because I have a bass line with somw pitch bends going down. I don't normally do this - so I haven't come across it before. Then I also got a new slide guitar for Kontakt - and that is going to use a lot of pitch bend info - hence my newfound interest in this ;-)