Mellotron
Someone else who's heard of the Mellotron! The staple of progressive rock of the '70s, and the bane of roadies and keyboard techs everywhere. It was a sort of early sample playback technology. They made tapes of various instruments being played, note for note, one tape for each note. The master tapes were duplicated into strips (not loops) of tape. Inside the machine, the tapes were anchored at one end, and the other end hung loose in a take-up box. The tape laid on top of the capstain, which ran horizontally under the keyboard. Pressing a key pressed a pinch roller on the corresponding strip of tape, causing the capstain to drag it across the head. When the key was released, a spring pulled the tape back. The tapes were stored in a big frame mechanism, which in theory could be changed out quickly. In practice, it was another matter. Alignment of the tape strips to the pinch rollers and heads was a constant problem. A lot of the early motor control boards were faulty, and the motor would vary in speed, causing notes to change pitch and go out of tune.
Even the creation of the Mellotron is a drama-filled story. It was actually invented by an American named Harry Chamberlain back in the '50s. Chamberlain had a small shop and sold a few hundred instruments. At one point in the '60s, one of his sales people took some mechanical drawings to Streetly Electronics in London, and presented the idea to them as being his work, and convinced them to manufacture it. It wasn't until after they started selling Mellotrons that Streetly found out that they were infringing on Chamberlain's patents. Lawsuit city. Eventually that got settled, but there was some odd division of the business into Mellotronics, which owned the name and the master tapes, and Streetly, which actually built and sold the things. Through a series of court actions, in the late '70s a New Jersey company acquired Mellotronics and they hit Streetly with a cease-and-desist order. Streetly had to stop using the Mellotron name for the instruments they built. Subsequently the whole thing collapsed.
The story doesn't end there, though. Some guys in New England started acquiring the master tapes and spare parts, and eventually they were able to go in business. They are now manufacturing new Mellotrons in small numbers. And if you have a computer with digital audio workstation software, you can buy a copy of G-Force's M-tron software. It contains samples of hundreds of Chamberlain and Mellotron master tapes. I've got it, and everything I do with it comes out sounding like Tony Banks.
