Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

For those of you that played live with them...you pretty much have
to leave them running so that when the parts of the songs come up in
the act that utilize the Mellotron--it will be (hopefully) in tune.
You get the fear that you need to ∗test∗ it off-cue to be sure it
doesn't sound off when it's crunch time. I guess it would be nice if
the motor locks on an exact speed immune from voltage fluctuations
like a Tecnics turntable maybe things would be a bit more
predictable...but that's really getting mechanical.

I've used an Optigan on stage and these drifting problems keep your
trigger finger on the pitch control on the first note. I've felt
tempted to unplug the output jack & check it with headphones, but
luckily the tenure of the band I play with doesn't exactly fret over
nitpicking perfectionist details.