Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

Hello all,

Due to a combination of sitting here at work in front of a large number of
extremely high-tech but ultimately boring machines and having way too much
coffee in my bloodstream, I wanted to spark up some conversations and see
what other tape-based-sample-playback nuts have to say:

Magnetic fields from other instruments?

As we all well know the Mellotron 400 was really designed to hold up
Minimoogs. The dimensions of the lid just cannot be a coincidence. A 2600
barely fits, and String Ensembles hang over the sides (String Ensembles are
kind of a bad word anyway, in this crowd). So where the heck am I going with
this... oh yeah, sometimes I move stuff around because I think that the
right keyboard setup will somehow inspire me to create that killer album and
I will become a great and popular musician. In the process I find that there
are certain instruments that when placed upon my creaky old Hammond cause a
nasty hum to come out the Leslie. I have tracked this down to the location
of the mains transformer in the offending instrument relative to the drawbar
matching transformer in the Hammond. So I sometimes think - what effect can
this have on my Mellotron tapes? Any? None? A little?

1/4" tape in a 3/8" machine?

Done it, seems to work. Long ago (before I was married, long before the
Advent Of The Small Children) I lay me down on the floor with my TEAC and
striped all four channels across with the intro monolog and music for the
Outer Limits ("there is nothing wrong with your television set" "do not
attempt to adjust the picture"). I split it all up into 8-second bits, which
this program material actually supports quite well. My reasoning for using
all four tracks was that the tape would wander around in the combs but if
the track selector were in the B position there would always be audio coming
through. It worked! Now that I have leaked out to the world exactly what
kind of strange weirdo I really am (or used to be), I was wondering how
others have made this work. Are there any of the fabled 1/4" combs out
there? Did they come with some kind of modified detent plate for the track
selector? How many other tricks are out there?

I Am Afraid To Look At My Motor Brushes

There. I said it. I know they are in there. I know how to find them. I am
not afraid of that. I am afraid of the consequences of said action. Do
replacements exist and where. Or am I just being paranoid.

Why Is Every Other Word Capitalized Suddenly?

Okay like I said too much coffee.

Best Regards,

- Gene

M400S #1023
M400S #1213
M400S #1289