Another flaw of Slidex is that if someone sits on the console, puts a heavy tape box on top of them
or otherwise bends the thin aluminum stalk of the fader knob, they don't work smoothly anymore. I
assume ADM had a full-time guy fixing those things as they came in by the batch from broadcast and
recording studio customers.
One the other hand, I have a batch of them that were used for 20 years in a TV station with some
respect for its equipment, and all but one of them work well and were easy to clean and oil when I
got them. I keep them as a curiosity, because they don't really have a modern application aside from
restoring a vintage ADM console.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "Stephen Anderson" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 2:25 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] The root of the slide-fader?
Having recently refurbished an early '70s ADM console (thanks, Tom!), I can state fairly firmly that
the Slidex, which used a twisted piece of aluminum activated by the slider to turn a conventional
Allen Bradley pot, was pretty crude, and very difficult to match mechanically, channel to channel.
Teac/Tascam in their Series 70 mixers used a string to turn a standard rotary pot, if memory serves,
this was much better.
Steve
On Apr 12, 2012, at 11:08 AM, Tom Fine wrote:
> http://www.google.com/patents/US2517180?printsec=drawing#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
> Art Davis worked for Cinema Engineering, which was marketing a form of this kind of attenuator in
> 1953 and probably earlier.
>
> See:
> http://www.preservationsound.com/?p=4611
> (I provided the scans, from old magazines)
>
> As we know, slide-faders became the preferred interface for analog mixing boards, eventually
> replacing rotary faders in almost all applications (although small-format mixers sold by companies
> like Behringer, Mackie, Alesis and others still use rotary faders). There have been many varients
> on slide-faders over the years. In the 60's, Fairchild sold a fader that controlled the intensity
> of a light source, which then interacted with a LDR to control gain, branded "Autoten." In the
> 70's, Audio Designs & Manufacturing (ADM) patented a mechanical system that drove a pot that
> controlled a VCA to control gain. The advantage of the ADM "Slidex" attenuator was that liquid
> (perhaps coffee at a TV station, beer at a radio station or something more exotic at a recording
> studio) could spill across the slider section of the console and not short out anything, within
> reason.
>
> Here is the Slidex patent:
> http://www.google.com/patents/US3736801?printsec=drawing#v=onepage&q&f=false
>
> -- Tom Fine
Stephen Anderson
631 E. Vista del Playa
Orange, CA 92865
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