I just found this blog with some interesting facts about one of his consoles with pictures of it and some background highlights of his career. 
http://balanceweblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/stephens-console.html?showComment=1334265193322#c7691186314844194496 
Rod Stephens

--- On Thu, 4/12/12, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] The root of the slide-fader?
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Thursday, April 12, 2012, 11:43 AM

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
[log in to unmask]
http://SteveAudio.blogspot.com