Following is a pretty funny excerpt I found on
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,2100-14411-1429736,00.html:
RICK WAKEMAN So in love was Wakeman with the Mellotron that he
bought the company, Victor Kayam-style, in the late Seventies.
Sadly, the Mellotron's era was ten years before Sergeant
Pepper, Nights in White Satin, et al and 15 years hence, when
the likes of Air brought its plaintive qualities back into fashion.
The Mellotron was an unwieldy machine that operated on a series of
tape loops that were frustratingly hard to tune, but Wakeman's
dream-come-true was to create a supersize Mellotron which he
cunningly named the Birotron, which made it sound like a cheap
plastic version that shatters easily underfoot. Thirty-five
Birotrons were built before the company went belly up. Nobody I know
has ever heard one, and only six are said to have survived, one of
which recently sold for $35,000.
Wakeman, broke after a series of divorces, sadly flogged his own
Birotron long ago.
Bernie
M400 #500 in the oven