Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

With the Trons I've owned/serviced, I carefully check the entire
tape path for the slightest burrs/dirt, etc. Clean,polish is the rule.
Small wrinkles on the tape can be carefully removed with
clothes-iron on LOWEST position and with GENTLE  pressure atop
soft fabric surface. I tried this on an orig. "BBS"  scrap tape
and it worked fine ! I don't think this will work on newer tapes
with matte and/or coloured surfaces.

Recently, I picked up a couple of old reel to reel recorders tp play around with.  Seems that everyone is going digital these days, and you can find these things for not much money.  As I read up on the maintenance for these, I'm struck by the similarity to our mellotron maintenance techniques.  Clean and demag the heads, lube and clean the pinch rollers, ∗keep the tape path clean∗.  Sound familliar?  I have to admit, when I read "keep the tape path clean" as part of the routine maintenance after so many hours of use, I started to shudder, thinking about my two mellotrons.  There is much more "tape path" with 35 tapes and heads, pinch rollers, etc.  I don't know many of us who regularly clean the tape path of our entire mellotron after a set number of hours of use (or non-use).  With me, it's more like I go in to fix a few notes that are starting to sound bad for one reason or another.  I suppose that the tape path of the entire machine gets cleaned during a major restoration.  Something to think about, anyway.

Also, while researching about the reel to reel recorders, I came across something that may help us maintain our mellotrons.  There is a fluid available which is supposedly good for cleaning tape heads ∗and∗ pinch rollers.  Many of us use isopropyl alcohol to clean the heads and to also clean the dirt out of the pinch rollers so that they will spin.  However, the long term effects of isopropyl alcohol on the pinch roller rubber is probably not good.  I 've dunked my pinch rollers in alcohol, so that's probably going to come back to haunt me at some point according to what I have read.  Anyway, this new stuff is also supposed to be good for the rubber, brings it back to life, etc.  I've never tried it, but I just ordered a small quantity to test it out.  Thought I'd share it with the group.  It seems to be tape head / pinch roller cleaner and pinch roller rubber rejuvenator all in one.  Here's the link:

http://www.usrecordingmedia.com/cleanwipandm.html


There are also some other products on this web page, such as the cleaning wipes which are made to clean existing tapes, which may be helpful for mellotron and mellotron tape maintenance.  There's a much larger market for reel to reel tape machines than for mellotrons, so chances are that there are other products like these which are made for reel to reel machines which can help us maintain our mellotrons, since mellotron and reel to reel maintenance is so similar.


Ken M.
MKII #247
M400 #1217