I'll probably regret weighing in on this contentious issue, but here goes.
Let's talk about cars. Many people in this country would like to own a big-block Shelby Cobra, a 1969 Chevrolet Yenko Camaro, or a Porsche Speedster like the one James Dean died in. Top-notch examples of these three cars are today going for averages of a half-million dollars or more, and most of the people who pay that kind of money for them either hermetically seal them as museum exhibits and investments that they hope to reap profits from later on, or drive them a mile or two a month and spend the rest of the time polishing them in masturbatory ecstasy.
You can now buy incredibly accurate and authentic replicas of all three of these vehicles for the price of a normal luxury car, sixty to eighty thousand dollars. The replicas are not the real thing, but they provide the looks, a lot of the feel and sensual experience of the real items, and you can drive them to the grocery store without worrying that some clown is going to ruin your irreplaceable half-million dollar investment with a door ding, and without having to spend a thousand dollars or more on a detailing if you happen to get rained on. A lot of them are purchased by people who actually do own the real things, but love them and respect them so much that they couldn't bear seeing them come to harm.
Is this a reason to denigrate the replica cars? They are different. They serve a different purpose. They are not meant to replace or supplant the real thing. They are meant to be useable in a real-world scenario. I play two to three nights a week on small stages in small venues. I have no roadies. I schlep my own gear. I could not bear watching my prized M400 deteriorate by bits and pieces, night after night, just for the measly pay and lack of recognition that musicians get at the local level. The biggest sorrow would be that even if I did, probably nobody in the club but me would know I was practically playing a Stradivarius. For the average lout in the audience, it would just be a funny-looking white box that sounded like fiddles.
I'd be happy driving a replica Shelby Cobra. I'd be happy with something that gave me a lot of the Mellotron experience, but that I could move by myself with ease, was playable out of the box night after night with no maintenance, and could replace with minimal shedding of tears. Sex with a condom isn't quite the same, either, but people still do it. I see the Memotron as "safe Mellotroning" for the 21st century. I think that the Memotron is also going to inadvertently HELP the real ones, too. I've long wished that our Mellotron friends on either side of the Atlantic would either singly or together do a PROPER digital recreation just to make "that sound," or at least a reasonable approximation of it, accessible to everyone and more prominent in the music world again. Let's face it, if you want one that's done right, go to the people that do it right in the first place.
Yes, it may just bite into the sales of the real thing for a while. However, in the long run, I can't help but see it as one more step in the promotion, history, preservation, and development of this unique and marvelous instrument that we all love so much.
Let the flaming begin...