That leads to the weird behavior, that the first half (sine to somewhere between saw and square) is modulated monophonic and then the polyphony kicks in and modulates the second half polyphonically.
If you think of PWM and shape as two separate things, which they are in the hardware, just sharing a knob in the UI, it should be easier to wrap your head around. The blend between sine, saw and pulse is controlled monophonically, while the pulse width is controlled polyphonically.
I am not that familiar with analog poly-synths, I own a few VAs and analog mono-synths and played with modular a bit, so this may be a completely common thing among analog polys. And it's nothing I am too worried about because that seems to be an uncommon modulation. But I think this is a "nice to know" and may help with modulating PWM polyphonic in the "right" way.
If you look at a more basic analog poly, like the Prophet 5, or a Juno, that lacks a full mod matrix, certain parameters are set by a knob but can't be modulated by an envelope or LFO at all. For example, resonance. Or, something like pulse width might only be able to be modulated by a single global LFO (on a Juno... I know the P5 has the polymod section). For these instances, it's more cost effective to share a single control voltage for all the voices for that parameter. Of course, things that need to have polyphonic control for the synth to be polyphonic, have separate CVs per voice, like oscillator pitch, filter cutoff, and output VCA level, envelopes etc.
The Take 5 seems to be designed in this manner. If you look through all the mod destinations in the matrix, only a few are polyphonic... osc pitch, osc1 shape (PWM only), filter cutoff, envelope parameters, output volume, LFO2 rate, etc. Some analog polysynths are built with every parameter individually addressable on every voice, like the Alesis A6 Andromeda, Moog One, and the Arturia Polybrute, but these synths were designed from the ground up to be mega modulation monsters and/or multitimbral.
Of course, with digital and software synths, the only limitations are in the code, CPU and memory capacity.
I have a hunch the decision to make PWM poly on Osc1 only wasn't just a cost cutting decision, but a flexibility decision as well. By making each oscillator different this way, you have the choice of having mono or poly PWM, just by choosing which oscillator to use (or use it on both, in which case you can have poly on one and mono on the other).
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