Good review! I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head. This was one of the best shows I've seen in a long time.
Here's some tales from the other side of the curtain...
Mellotrons 1023 and 1213 had tape sets Mixed Strings/Mixed Choir/Brass and BBS Cello/3 Violins/Flute, respectively. Both used only for RMI's set. They sounded pretty darn good (yeah I'm biased... these machines do have the latest Marcus Reisch motor controllers). They were going to be used for Ryo Okumoto's setup also, but then HIS 'tron arrived courtesy of Brad Barker from ProgRadio. It was donated to him! This was a scuffed up black M400SM sold by Sound Sales Connecticut, with Flute/3 Violins/Mixed Choir. Since Ryo uses these three sounds, we figured we'd prefer this to having the two white 400's with two tape sets to get his three sounds. Given the time constraints between sets and the lack of DI channels, we decided to take the simple approach instead of the piles-of-keyboards look. Oh yeah, the Minimoog was mine too :)
However, the SM was not in the best shape upon arrival. The Protecto-Muff was in good shape, but the power cord pouch was empty! The normal power input socket was gone, with a standard IEC socket hanging out of the hole on about 4 inches of non-strain-relieved wire. There was a blob of gratuitous electrical tape around the solder joints, at least.
Next there were several keys that were doing the dying-cow thing (is there a better name for that?). We dragged the thing outside into the daylight (the rain having departed as if it were never there) and I borrowed a set of headphones from the recording guy. I tweaked the pressure pad settings while Dave Robin (video documenter) taped me. He asked me if there was hope for this Mellotron, to which I looked at the camera and replied "There's hope for ALL Mellotrons". Pretty corny, huh. Sometimes I crack myself up. Anyway the tuning job was a success. All I had to do was go steal somebody's IEC power cord...
About the SM - did Sound Sales inherit white cabinets and paint them black? This one was pretty scuffed up, and I could tell that it was white underneath the black. It had the liberty-bell-shaped "M" on the control panel, and the same logo much larger on the rear panel. I think the s/n was 15-something. It was also missing the tape bin cover plate (see earlier post by me) so we spent some time looking for a suitable piece of poster board etc. We were ready to try the top from a pizza box but it was like an inch too short. Oh well, the show went on with open tape collection bins... no problems.
Tron 1213 had been at another show a couple of weeks before (Rocket Scientists and Shawn Guerin in Thousand Oaks) and Erik Norlander wanted to do pitch-bended flutes with it. We discovered however that the pitch knob could not be touched without causing a severe momentary drop in motor speed. Not good. It was stable if you left it alone, but if you looked at it funny the motor would practically stop and then start again. I told Erik that there was a chance that I would make things worse as easily as better if I messed with it, so normal flutes it was for the show (he always has samples as backup anyway). It did sound Really Really good (oh there I go again!) however.
So the week before ProgWest I took the control panel off and sure enough, the bottom had fallen off the pitch pot and was sitting at the bottom of the cabinet (where the mouse poop etc. usually lives). I Cramolin'ed the wirewound element and the pot wipers and glued the bottom back on, and the pitch control became smooth and friendly once again. Ha! Easy fix.
That's it! Sorry for the long-windedness, but I figured it anybody would listen it would be you guys!
One last thing - a big thank you to Duncan and Steve from RMI for playing TRON CELLO live!!! I never hear that sound and it's such a shame. Thanks guys.
- Gene
M400S #1023
M400S #1213
M400S #1289