Hi pd-list, jamie,
I personally think that Behringer's BCF2000 is brilliant. http://www.behringer.com/BCF2000/index.cfm?lang=ENG. It is MIDI, but all of the faders and rotaries can be set to send 14-bit abs or rel. Is 0-16383 enough?
Did you get abs mode to work with pd?
Cheers Anton