Kaatskit Radio Company

The quality of the faders is important, but good faders are very expensive!

Practically, they fall into 3 categories:

• The so-called “thin” faders are the least expensive, and are used by all inexpensive equipment. They work fine when they are new, but they are vulnerable to contamination. Usually, cleaning them makes them like new again, but with heavy use some will need to be replaced.
• For a little extra cost, there are “rail” faders that go a long way toward solving the problems, and they feel better too.
• For a big extra cost, the Penny & Giles faders are truly the best, and are used by most very high end equipment. The problem is that using them would add around $2000 to sale price of a typical console of the size we make.

If you spend enough money you can get the best, but in our case, we feel that it is usually more important to keep the cost down, so we use the Bourns “rail” faders. Most of the competitors in a similar price range use the “thin” faders.

Ours differs in two important ways.

First, since we accept that the faders will require service and possibly replacement, we make it easy to do. Each fader mounts to its own little PC board, with a cable so they plug in and can be replaced in a few minutes.

Second, since it is plug in, and standard size, any of those faders, from the cheapest “thin” faders to the best P&G faders will fit, and can be changed in the future. We offer the better faders as an extra cost upgrade. You can upgrade when you do the initial customization, or later when you need it and the funds become available.

In the past, we used the thin faders like everyone else, but made them plug-in with a little PC board. These can be upgraded easily by the customer to the rail faders we use now.

Looking at the competition, anything using the P&G faders sells for at least twice the price of ours. The ones that sell for a comparable price all use the thin faders, soldered into a big PC board. They will be difficult to replace, and you must replace with the same kind. You can't upgrade later.

So, we went with a middle ground, Bourns PTS rail faders as standard, making them plug in so they can be serviced, and offering the option to upgrade.