The Yamaha AN1x Synthesizer mailing list

You can but a brand new Mellotron at www.mellotron.com for a mere 
$5,000. They were most famous for the flute (think Strawberry Fields 
Forever) the choir, and the strings. The Moody Blues used them a lot. 
Chamberlains are a lot like a Mellotron.

The old Vintage Keys module had nice Mellotron samples.For string 
samples, you can take almost any patch, go to the amplitude envelope 
section, turn the attack up to about 40, the sustain and release all 
the way up and voilla. Give the patch some cheesy reverb (I like 
plate reverb). Use the layer button to layer scene 1 and 2, and give 
it a little detune. The AN1X actually has a few nice string section 
patches that only need a little tweaking.

I layer my Mellotron string samples with my AN1x string sounds. For 
extreme tackiness, layer the obnoxious Mellotron female choir ooohs 
with the strings.

It's also fun to build a pretty string patch and set the free eg so 
that the tuning, feedback, and ring modulation start building up 
gradually so this pretty patch dissolves into a mass of cacophony

Rainbow Jimmy
http://www.spaceanimals.com
http://www.mp3.com/spaceanials