Well this might interest some of you.
Some of you know about this already and some don't.
When I first became involved with fixing the Double Mellotron that belonged to Rick Wakeman / Yes, I had to acquire all kinds of help from people who had been involved with the instrument back in the 70's.
This was mainly because the electronics and design had been altered.
Some of these people were also involved with the making of the Birotron and this led to eventually meeting Wakeman (again) and working on restoring bits of the Birotron - old cartridge tapes, an unfinished prototype etc.
The basic idea was just to give it some presence and not let it disappear completely into oblivion.
While I was going down this path, I was eventually able to encounter and subsequently acquire not just a Birotron but also the master tape library, which unfortunately cannot be played without the tapes first being heat treated to dry them out.
I've privately received a lot of interest outside our respective 'mellotron groups' from people all over the world who would like to have the Birotron sounds and be able to use them. I suspect some of these are people who wanted a Birotron back in the 70's and never received one. But most are definitely younger people looking for sounds that are new. The Birotron sounds have gone unheard and unplayed for about 40 years.
Since it's literally impossible for people to play a Birotron these days, the next best thing (the only thing actually) is to archive these sounds digitally, make new 8 track replacement tapes from the master tapes, and find a format to make the sounds eventually available to others - either some kind of sample library or virtual instrument.
So I started a fundraising page for an entire Birotron 'resuscitation' project (sound preservation/archive/museum display/promotional concert/restoration of surviving Birotron units)
with the funds first going to save the sound library from rotting away permanently which is what is happening as I write this.
Although the tapes are kept in a temperature controlled environment, the type of mould on the tapes likely comes from the climates of several countries they've been through, and can only be slowed down - not halted. The mould is also toxic and I'm not able to ship these to a preservation facility in the USA without taking on undue risk, or incurring ridiculous expenses or paperwork.
I've contacted specialists here in Canada who've advised putting the tapes in a sealed room and then using a special ozone dispensing machine so that ozone can be pumped in, whilst driving all the oxygen out and starving/killing off the mould for a minimum 24 hour period.
This is a great idea except that we don't know what interactions or effects the ozone has chemically on the playability of the 40 year old tapes.
Which brings us back to square one - which is simply baking the tapes and recording them diligently within a 24 hour period, using a professional studio to digitally preserve them, and then editing the sounds for usability in software.
The features and drawbacks of the Birotron have been discussed on and off our list, (as have the Mellotron and Chamberlin) but since there are now only 2 complete and fully functioning machines left, in my opinion, what only matters now is just saving the sounds for posterity.
The original Birotron 8 track tapes have not been a viable sound source since about 1983, as the tapes were constantly going around and were designed for only 100 hours of use, and were already worn out back then because the bands that had them never received replacements - including Wakeman.
So the master tapes are the only viable sound source and the question now is whether you'd want the option of having Birotron sounds in the future, or whether these sounds should disappear forever.
Anyway if you're interested in this, please go to
https://www.gofundme.com/birotron and make a donation to help preserve the master tapes. There is a documentary video that explains everything and has been fact checked / error-checked by the Birotronics people who were both there and directly involved at that time.
The more support / donations we receive, the cheaper and more affordable the sounds would be. The less we receive the more astronomically expensive these would be. The latter is not what I want to see happen.
The worst case scenario is that only a few of the sounds can be preserved.
I've been in touch with the surviving people directly involved with the making of the Birotron master tapes, and they've assured me that no expense was spared in recording the sounds, so something worthwhile will come from the tapes.
Anyway, see what you think, and make up your own mind: