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Subject: Re: [ModularSynthPanels] Klee panel - knobs vs sliders

From: Michael Beck <mbeck@...>
Date: 2008-05-17

Hear hear, Steve! Well, that's three of us. Anyone else want to come
out of the woodwork? :)

> Hi Scott and others -
>
> Couldn't find the right message to reply to, so I'll start a new
> thread. The volume of replies is getting out of hand anyway.
>
> While sliders are cool, I'm definitely solidly in favor of knobs on my
> klee. I think Clickmrmike has seen my roland jd-800, which I've had
> since they were introduced back in the early 90's. 54 sliders. While
> these are considered to be some of the best sliders ever put on a
> performance instrument, at any point after the first year or so the
> chances of having all 54 sliders working correctly, even after
> rigorous cleaning, are minimal at best. With just 16 sliders, your
> chances get better, but there are still going to be problems - and
> this is a "will be problems" situation, not a "might have problems"
> thing.
>
> Sure, 16 spectrol pots are going to cost a bit, but they will be
> foolproof, and probably work perfectly with no problems for a lifetime
> (or at least my lifetime, or rather what's left). And actually 16
> spectrols isn't that much - I built a milton once with 64 pots - not
> spectrols, but pretty close in price. Heck, the doomsday has 18
> spectrols on it. And even alpha pots are a bit more reliable than most
> faders in my experience.
>
> So Scott, if a panel with holes in it is in the line-up, I'll buy one,
> if it appears in time, otherwise I'll finish up this fpd file and bite
> the bullet. By the way, my design is actually based originally on my
> old milton panel, just with a lot of stuff moved around/changed, etc.
> I don't have the size handy, but clickmrmike has my old panel - how
> big is it? That one was based on Jeff Pontius's design which is in the
> files here. It's the full bells and whistle design, btw, based on the
> designs of clickmrmike and Will and Bill. The current design 16 pots
> in a row) requires the smaller knobs, although there's room to
> stagger/offset the pots and actually use the larger ones - I haven't
> really got my head around that yet though.
>
> BTW, this isn't meant in any way to put down the slider fans - I think
> the slider klees I've seen and heard are fantastic - it's just my
> personal choice to use knobs. Call me old fashioned, call me a fuddy
> duddy, as long as you call me.
>
> Steve
>
>