[BrianG]

Like I said before, the Quark seems to sacrifice a bit of efficiency in favor of smooth running. To me it's worth it. I'd much rather add a little extra heatsinking than have an ESC that stutters, but that's just me.

If you are running a Neu on the MM and don't mind a little experimenting, try adding an extra capacitor or two to the battery inputs on the MM. They have to be low ESR types. Figure on two 220uF and 35v if you can fit it, or one more 330uF if not. Solder it directly to the + and - battery solder pads on the ESC. I'm going to try this someday, but I don't have a "bad" running system to see if it helps.

I suppose it can be discouraging to spend all kinds of cash on something that doesn't work up to expectations. Stick with it if you can because once you get it running, you'll be happy.

Mechanical controllers would be a bad idea. Those are usually servo driven and rely on resistors to drop some of the voltage to the motor so it goes slower. And dimmers are different; they use triacs on the 120v AC line and chop some of the sine wave off so the light/fan gets less power (I can go into more detail on this if you want, but don't think you really want to hear it, lol). They rely on a sine wave though, so it wouldn't work in R/C. IMO, the use of many paralleled FETs is the way to go - it's just up to the manufacturer to use them appropriately in their designs.