Archive of the former Yahoo!Groups mailing list: The Mellotron Group

Here’s the 4000D and the “mini” version shown at NAMM this year. 

Photo and comments by photographer/musician Ken Lee.

Mellotron's gone digital. And you know what? It sounds really good.

These are two keyboards, the small one on top the M4000D Mini (US$2000), and the one below the full M4000D (US$2800). The larger M4000D has wooden keys, depth sensitivity, and polyphonic aftertouch via MIDI out, and comes with 100 original Mellotron and Chamberlin sounds with immediate access. That's right, no having to change tapes. There's also an expansion slot so you can stuff another 100 sounds on compact flash cards. All of these sounds are from the original archives. The Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Wilco, Queens of the Stone Age, Fleet Foxes, and others use this.

The smaller M4000D Mini has the same features, but has a Fatar piano keyboard with velocity sensitivity and has a sheet metal cabinet instead of a wooden cabinet. Although the aftertouch simulates the real Mellotron, both Chris and I agreed that we'd be quite happy with the smaller and more portable Mini.

Oh, and the sounds? Did I mention that they sound really good?