Mellotronists

> > Someone else is bound to mention this, but miking it up (rather than
> > recording it directly) has a far more 'authentic' feel to it, if
> > that's
> > what you're after.
> 
> When Ian was up here last fall for Tronto MkII, I had a long discussion
> about how the first KC album was recorded--specifically the mellotron.
> Here's what he remembered:
> 
> Get one of those honking big Neumann U87s or U47s
> Play the mellotron through a HiWatt stack, turned up fairly loud
> Throw on lots of reverb at the mixing end and a bit on the amp/tron (if
> you have a MkII) end
> Stand back and make the hair stand up for everyone on your street
> (assuming you're doing this in your basement).
> Cost: about $7k
> Results: priceless
> 
> Hope this helps. Obviously, there are cheaper ways to go about this, but
> I would suggest a tube amp. I've run mine through a fair number and find
> Marshall & HiWatt the best. Odd that they're both British... Stay away
> from Fenders. For some reason, they seem to make melltrons sound pretty
> harsh.

This even works for the poor-mans-mellotronists like me that have to live with
samples. All my best almostmellotron recordings were done by running the sound
through a couple of Vox amps. I had particularly great success with a setup 
with one clean amp and one with a ton of reverb. Miking up both amps and then 
send the two signals through a ReVox A77 such that the two signals are delayed 
separately and added to the other channel with S-on-S. This gives an incredibly 
huge sound, yet distinctive and symmetric (sort of). A part of the trick here 
is that Vox amps from the mid-60'ies had a strange lo-fi reverb circuit based
on two grammophone pickups that suspend a spring. It sounds great for this 
purpose. 

Frank Carvalho