I'm not much help on this one. I'm not that familiar with the New Original Bradley. You may want to check with Bradley Support, if what you are planning to do will work. They may or may not answer. They may see it as a liability on their end. It the new type of generator can be adapted for use with your smoker, that would be less expensive, and solve both problems. If you buy the smoke generator with the adapter, that would cost you more upfront. Plus that slider controller will not last forever, and a replacement part will be almost impossible to find, so you would have to rig up some other type of rheostat to control the temperature, or purchase a temperature controller.
Looking at the manual, it looks as if the only cord attaching the new dial type generator to the cabinet is a short jumper cord. Which would mean the heat is controlled by regulating how much current is delivered to the cabinet. If so, you would not need to purchase a new heating element, which wouldn't be a bad idea to have an extra one around. What you would need to do is either wire the heating element to bypast the slider control, or leave the slider control at full power. Then the generator should control the cabinet temperature.
Depending on how old you Original Bradley is, you may already have a short jumper cord. If you don't you would need to purchase one, to hook the generator to the cabinet.
But you will need to check with Bradley, or someone with the newer type of generator can add any information on this.
