I have way too many of my own suggestions I'm compiling (after 15 minutes of having the update installed....) to have you try and shoehorn into your post! lol That, and I need line-breaks and more than the 4000char limit that comments afford me :}
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Ka-nobs

For "Knobs" I use a Magnet, scaled way down (via XML of course). A size of 0.05,0.2,0.05 is about perfect, using the "Simple Throttle" as a reference.
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Now comes the probably tricky part, since I have yet to really dive in to stuff, as I've mentioned: Getting it to do what you need a knob-interface to do, using the limitations of SP...
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Depending on what that new "Joystick Base" dohicky can do and how we can interact with it... My first thought is to slap the Knob on one of those (scaled way down to match), and use it's output to base other stuff's capabilities on.
IF that wouldn't work, my next suggestion would be to use a simple Rotator, tying those same "stuff" to the Rotator's position. So if it's currently rotated to 5deg of its 90deg max, then whatever its Input value fort that would trigger one function (although, probably best to set it as a range so it doesn't need to be precisely at 5deg). Then next, 10deg, same thing, triggers next function. Rinse, repeat.

Now, if none of that would work, then we'd have to go FULL KLUDGE and is probably similar to what you already did, but is sort of combining everything together.... :}
What comes to mind for me is to have:
-Either the "Joystick Base" or a "Rotator"... probably will need both, though?
-That Magnet Knob connected to that
-A button (scaled to be a thin line), at a 45deg angle maybe, positioned on the right-most side, colored bright
-Another button (similarly scaled) rotated opposite, positioned on the right-most side, colored a contrasting color (or the same *shrug)
-2 "Text" parts, each with a *V (letter vee), rotated around and positioned next to the bottom end of the button, to make an "Arrow"; one pointing one way, the other the opposite way
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When you interact with one button it turns the "knob" one direction via stepping the Rotator X-amount each press, hopefully creating an input (or output I guess?) with that Joystick Base, which in turn triggers whatever you need it to based on the specific output value.
<con't...>

Gauge Faces

Even if only having it so you can color the face, that'd work, too.
Granted, in most professional (ie a governing body oversee with standards), I'm sure black face with white text is mandatory for gauges....
However, more private/civilian stuff, and even things like non-transportation related gauges, there are different colors. Mostly white, but with aftermarket vehicle gauges for older cars, you can get all manner of colors for the faces.
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So I'd suggest a case of having a preset list of color ranges that if the Face gets colored to it, the Text is forced to be something else. Bright Red face = Bright White text. White face = Black text. Navy Blue face = Bright Gray text, etc etc.
Or, simpler and lest labor intensive (to determine which colors get which text): Just make the text color become the literal inversed color of the face! SP already is capable of this with Glass, when you set the transparency to -100. Black glass becomes white, Red becomes Blue, and so on.
($10 says I've reached the post character limit... lmao)
(EDIT: Yep! Reposting to solve that...)