Having been a member of this group and all of the previous incarnations for around a decade now, I've seen the same questions crop up over and over again, and I've been guilty of re-asking them from time to time myself. In some of the earlier groups there were people that really took exception to the occasional repetitions but after all of this time, I've realized that for me, the group really represents a repository of most of the interesting Mellotronic trivia that exists. While there may be a few that have every bit of all of the tidbits of information that we enjoy, a lot of us don't always have them at immediate grasp in reach of our recall and having the group is a convenient way of being able to "google" a really deep pool of information for something that's esoteric enough it might take a really long time to find on the real Google. So, at this point I enjoy seeing a lot of them. Stuff like the "Watcher of the Skies" thing may have somewhat tarnished over the years, but a lot of these little anecdotes are still enjoyable little reminders of once known but now forgotten trivia. So, everybody, thanks for that, it's really an important part of the group for me.
As for the sampler/tape thing, I think that once you record the sample back on to tape, the Mellotron's electronics hardware itself is what creates that unique audio vibe and that is why it sounds like a Mellotron. What I would really be interested in is taking a Mellotron, recording it digitally at maximum fidelity, and then hearing the samples and the actual Mellotron they were sampled from being A/B'd to each other through the same monitoring system and signal path. And no, while I have a couple high-end sampling instruments, I just don't mess with samples and the time it would take for me to become proficient enough to be able to undertake that experiment myself is more than I can spare at this age!