You did not have to buy the Clavia keyboard to get the Mellotron sounds. You could buy the same samples and play them on a Motif or Fantom. And with better fidelity and more tweakability than Clavia.
Markus' machine will give you the feeling of playing a real mellotron with a very similar playing experience using the same keyboard. Plus it looks cool.
Well, that begs the question, if Streetly has the "protection masters," then who has the MASTERS? If Markus has them and uses them to make the sounds for his new digital Mellotron sample player ( I refuse to call it the M4000 or a Mellotron) and it uses 24 bit uncompressed samples from those masters, it should sound OK I would think, and probably better than what's offered by Clavia.
I'm skeptical as to whether there will be a huge market for it. I am curious to hear it, though I imagine it sounds great. I just wonder what the attraction is? If all of the same sounds are now offered by Clavia ( I think you can get them uncompressed now) and the Clavia machines can play those samples and a jillion other sounds, then all you are buying is cosmetics.
I never thought there would be that big a market for the Memotron. I wonder how many of them have been sold. So if all of the bands/individuals that ever wanted a stand alone Mellotron sample keyboard purchased a Memotron... or if even half of them did (hell, a fourth of them), how big is the market going to be for another digital Mellotron emulator? Are folks that have Memotrons going to stick them in a closet or on eBay and then by Markus' machine? I'm sure Markus' sample library and pricing will be vastly superior to the Memotron's, but still, is that going to be enough? There is no question that everything he makes is first rate, and I'm sure the quality will be there, but are there going to be enough people that need that difference? I guess it really is attractive to all of the people that really would like to have the real thing but don't have the money. However, at some point you will have substantially fulfilled that market and once those buyers have the sample library, what else is there to sell to the customer base?
It would be interesting to know how many people purchased a Clavia keyboard just to get the Mellotron sounds.
Frank
In a message dated 7/25/2010 10:37:03 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, tronbros@aol. com writes:
We have Les's protection copies, one generation away from the MASTERS (sing hallelujas) but we never use them. They are there as a valued archive and have no place in regular tape production or any simulation.