Thanks... The manual gives these things a different name, "x_input" rather than "x_scale". From what you say, and thinking about what I tried, there may also be complications connected to the alignment of the object surface. Does the 2D node-output image in the Materials Room show the same 2D as the plane-object you're trying to work on? Anyway, it seems clear that even with an input such as "U_node", which is bounded to the 0-1 range, it's much bigger than the internally calculated "sx". Is there some way of scaling the node output? Or is this going to need a Python script to let a single control adjust everything in proportion?