I already have. The answer was an astounding "no".
indeed. astounding? perhaps 'understandable'... after all, they use their custom spec'ed panels to make a commercial product. If they sold the EL panels freely, you could make an identical product for less money. Since they've invested in their product development, its reasonable that they'd want to protect that investment.
anyways, Bill from Kenetek was very helpful; aside from emailing me back very quickly, he did suggest to take a look at
http://www.astronics.com/ for the supply of EL panels, as they're apparently the closest to original spec of the currently available panels. Has anyone tried emailing them yet?