Well - I don't know about 'meticulously cared-for Chamberlins'.
I think Dave and Markus were doing the "caring" - fixing them up and getting them to sound right after years of misadjustment. Mellotrons are generally easier to fix than Chamberlins and that includes all models.
Markus did have access to an M1 so there's a few sounds from that model in there, and I agree that the other sounds would have come from both older material they sampled from other instruments, or the master tapes.
But there are some sounds from late 1979 - 1980 Chamberlins that were never sold in earlier machines.
Harry relented in the last year of the business and did custom sounds for people and finally allowed his personal sounds to be shared. So not all the Chamberlin sounds would be coming from actual Chamberlin keyboards because not all the sounds made it into the units. And nobody has ALL the master tapes. They are shared privately amongst a few people.
On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 10:57 AM, ClayE
<ecclesreinson@rogers.com> wrote:
Chris Dale wrote:
> I believe Markus must have either taken the tapes from the Chamberlin masters, with the exception of sampling whatever was in the M1 he had in for repair at the time.
I believe that they are excellent digital samples taken from Mellotron and Chamberlin outputs. On the Pinder CD it says "each key sampled directly from the most meticulously cared-for Mellotrons and Chamberlins". They (DK and MR) have had access to a variety of Chamberlins and Chamberlin sounds over the years. Whenever they could sample a particular Chamberlin sound, they would.
Don't forget that 99 sounds would be 33 tape frames. Maybe there is something not quite right about this keyboard other than its crappy name. Right now, I don't know of anything.
Clay