Knobula Knobs

It all seems so obvious looking back. You start an electronics company whose central pillar and actual name celebrates the abundance of knobs on its products. Yet the knobs themselves are a ubiquitous off-the-shelf design that has been around since the 1970s.

I could have picked any knob design in 2020 when I started Knobula but there was something special about the Sifam skirted control knobs. They were a classic form found on all the best British mixing consoles, and I had personally attached them during the summer of ‘84 when assembling weighing machines at my father’s factory in Canada. A whole summer lost to work experience, saving up to buy a weird silver rhythm box, or what is now more commonly now known as a TR-606. At this point it’s worth pointing out that myself and Knobula are UK based and Canada has been my home in the past. I like to think Ritchie Hawtin would appreciate the transatlantic connection.

Fast forward back to the present and I was beginning to wonder why I was paying a premium for knobs in their thousands while also spending long nights at the kitchen table carefully pressing pointers onto knob bodies, inserted at just the right angle, to complete these fiddly two-piece assemblies. This didn’t always go as planned, put the pointer cap on wrong knobs would appear "upside down" and my inbox would light up with people thinking we'd soldered the pots on backwards. Apologies to early Pianophonic owners.

It was one of my visually impaired customers who alerted me to the fact that the Sifam knobs had no discernible feature you could feel, and therefore no way of knowing which direction they were pointing. This resonated with me because it had already been bothering me for some time. I was ignoring something Don Buchla cared deeply about: instruments should work through touch as much as sight.

Today, that feels more relevant than ever. The sensations that pass from our fingertips to our brains are being sacrificed at the altar of screen-based music production, numbing those subtle sensations we once took for granted.

It was at this point I knew, Knobula needed Knobula knobs and as from today new knobs we have, complete with touchy feely pill pointers inspired by our K logo.

(if you squint you can see its a knob)

I was hoping the knob transition would be straightforward; make new knobs - all new product designs feature new knobs - done. Reality, as always, has other plans. So I'm gradually introducing new knobs across all product lines as and when we build them, as and when we run out of old stock and generally phasing them in where practically possible. Not so glamourous as the champagne and drug fueled launch event I had planned in my head. Instead it is simply an incremental product tweak with a romantic back story.

So if you have just bought a Knobula and it still has Sifam knobs, think of it as like owning a pre '74 Porche 911, its a sought after classic that will also match your Intelijels, SSLs and the odd Wasp synth. But if you unbox one with the new pill knobs, enjoy not having to look at them, while quietly appreciating which way they are pointing.