I too had a Yamaha electone with motorized sliders. It was a model FS-70 which was the top of the FS series range (one down from the FX series).

These sliders were notoriously unreliable. Conventional wisdom at the time said that the main cause was usually lack of use over the full travel causing them to stick. Knowing of this, I programmed a pair of panel presets - one with all the sliders fully down, the other with them all the way up. When I switched the instrument on for a session, I would then 'excercise' the sliders a few times, by alternating between these two presets. However my FS70 had a complete fader set replaced under warranty twice, as they still gave problems despite this precaution.

Possible cost effective solutions could be:

1: the later Yamaha HX & HS system, where the traditional sliders were replaced by a vertical strip of closely spaced buttons.

These were shaped so you could either run your finger up the strip, simulating a moving fader, or could punch a setting straight in at any point on the strip. The button strip was flanked by a ladder of LEDs which indicated current setting, so you always had a visual indication available. This system worked well and was very reliable. The tactile feel of the button row was a bit akin to running your finger over a small roller bearing track.

Downside was that there were only so many buttons in each fader strip, each one representing a small step in volume (you could also do in-between settings). This was a bit like the idea of the stepped drawbar settings on a Hammond, rather than the continuous nature of an analogue fader, but the gradations were fine enough to be practical. In a modern instrument, this concept could be supplemented with a 'fine-tune' feature via software, using the data wheel for very precise in-between increments. Whilst such a fine-tune refinement would not be any use for on-the-fly tweaks, it would be OK when dialing up final refinements for preset patches.

2 - second possible solution would be to use bog standard analogue sliders as at present, but deploy them in pick-up mode with an LED ladder close alongside each one to indicate current position.

Advantages of this include:
- low cost off-the-shelf hardware
- accurate fader adjustment is easy
- good visual clue as to current position
- pick-up mode gives reasonably seamless
operation with no nasty jumps
.... can't think of too many disadvantages



[This message has been edited by MikeTV (edited 05-29-2008).]