Part of the justification for the giant juicy slider pots on the Delta Flyer (and Delta Flyer 2 when I can scrounge the time to assemble it and move the keyboard up for testing) is that when you' go looking for potentiometers with physical controls on Digikey or the like they're all about a buck anyway so you might as well get nice ones.  Also the other parts like the DIP switch bank and the DIN jack aren't cheap either.

This isn't the case if you buy from overseas.  I'm seeing 10 packs of knob or volume-wheel pots for 70 cents and 4-packs of rotary DIP switches for 5 bucks from the usual places.  Combine this with newly-standardized 3.5mm MIDI (and the assumption that adapter cables will be built) and we're looking at vastly less board space used.

Suddenly a board run for kits is an actual semi-reasonable idea.  They won't be as gloriously physical as the DFs, but a retroenmodulator board could fit within the footprint of the Nucleo connectors and probably have room to spare for a badly needed audio amp, so it works with something other than powered computer speakers.  Think something on the order of $20, probably with a margin.  Assuming I ever find the time.