Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: Mellotronists

 

> >Hi John/Bernie/all:

 

If this is accurate then it's the second Birotron Dave Kean purchased.

Dave got his first Birotron in 1991 from a fellow named Mike Ayoub who lived in Detroit,Michigan. Mike offered the Birotron to Dave after helping him find his first mellotron 400.

In 1990 I purchased a Minimoog from Mike and at that time he also offered to sell me Rick Wakeman's double mellotron (proto MkV), this same Birotron, a Mander pipe organ, a BX3, as well as the guts from the B3 that was at Woodstock 69.

 I turned these items down as the Minimoog was all I wanted at the time.

These items were also in various states of disrepair, and the Birotron was missing tapes / semi functional at best. When I called him later for some advice in tuning the Minimoog he mentioned the Birotron had been sold it to Dave. This is the unit that appears in his "Workings" video.

I guess the point is that it suggests there are probably more Birotrons out there. According to Wakeman 35 were made, whether they were fully functional or not is another story.

 

Chris

 

 

>
> >
>
> Many years later I told this story to David Kean, (who I had
contacted when I was having
> problems with my Mellotron Mark V. I finally met David Kean when
I worked for E-mu
> Systems (Emu had a "after trade show" party at Dave Kean's studio
when it was in North
> Hollywood, CA one year) and he had expressed an interest in
getting his hands on a
> Birotron. I told him that I did at one time have David Biro's
phone number so I looked and
> found a very old phone book of mine that had David Biro's Mom's
home phone number in
> CT. At the time David Biro still lived there with his Mom. Turns
out that Dave Biro did
> have a Birotron still in his possession. Dave Kean then called
and thanked me. He told me
> later that he bought David Biro's personal Birotron from him. Not
sure what he paid for it.
>
> Ironically, I heard from Ed Cohen over the past year and he
mentioned that Dave Biro is
> living in Florida last he heard.
> Thru my relationship with Ed Cohen I eventually got to meet Rick
Wakeman and Keith
> Emerson.
> I ended up demonstrating the Polyfusion Modular Synthesizers to
both of them. Keith
> Emerson basically said, "he's never going to use anything other
than Moog synths, due the
> relationship he had with Bob Moog. We took my entire Polyfusion
Synth in multiple
> cabinets to Rick Wakeman's hotel room in New York, and he loved it
so much he ordered a
> larger system based on what was in my personal system.
> The problem was that Rick never paid for or took delivery of the
system after they custom
> built it for him. Talk about feeling stupid to the owners of
Polyfusion.
>
>
> Sorry for the length of the post and the off topics bit at the end
regarding synthesizers
>
> John
>