Mellotronists

FWIW

Much of what I'm talking about below has been documented on my web site, with 
photos.

It's been a few years now since I purchased my first M400.  #1217 had spent 
it's prior life in a recording studio in Nashville, and it came to me with a 
vintage 1970s tape set.  I later found out this "BBS"  (I think it stands for 
Bradley Standard) set contained EMI 515 / 516 tape stock.   

Anyway, this tape set has always played like a dream.  No adjustments needed, 
tapes always snapped right back, sounded great.  Then I started purchasing 
some new tape sets.  I bought a set on the pink BASF tape stock, and after a 
week or so, the tapes would get stuck in the tape box.  Martin, standing 
behind his work, made a new set from the yellow BASF stock and sent it to me 
(at no charge).  Well, this got stuck also, although not as often as the pink 
stuff.  Martin again re-recorded my set onto some other tape stock (no charge 
again), and this worked.  It didn't get stuck at all.  However, none of the 
sets ever played as well as my original BBS set.   Ken Leonard will verify 
this.  Between us we have at least 8 tape frames, and the BBS set stands out 
as the best.   My other sets all require adjustment after they go into the 
machine, where the BBS set is always "wobbly free" and ready to go.  Martin 
(or maybe it was Jerry Korb) dubbed my house the "Merbler Triangle" because 
of the problems I had experienced along the way, but I always suspected that 
the tape stock was behind most of the problems.

I didn't want to make a big issue about it, because I found out that this 
"BBS" tape stock was no longer available, so what's the point?  When JB 
brought up the issue in Toronto last year, this confirmed my own findings.  
He essentially said that Mellotrons hate modern tape,  that today's tape 
doesn't drive as well through a Mellotron because of the modern tape 
formulation (how it's made).  He said that if he had a time machine, he would 
go back thirty years or so and get as much of the EMI 515 tape that he could 
get his hands on.  So here it was, out in the open, the "dirty little secret" 
of getting your Mellotron to behave.  I have to commend JB for saying this, 
because at the time he said it, he didn't have access to any of this EMI 
tape.

Well, a few months ago, Martin informed me that they had found a source for 
some of the vintage EMI tape (which turned out to be EMI 561 - same thing, 
different color backing he tells me), and asked if I'd be interested in 
getting some new sounds for my MKII.  My RH keyboard had been giving me fits 
with wobblies (even MKIIs have problems), and I was eager to replace some of 
the old, unused sounds on that side with some of his new sounds.  This would 
allow me to "kill two birds with one stone", so I rolled up my pennies 
(literally - there was $260 there!) and went for it.  Long story short, the 
new tapes sound great and the wobblies are gone.  Cleaning the pinch rollers 
helped, but I'm certain that the tape stock is what made the real difference.

After this, I mentioned to Martin  that there are probably a lot of Tron 
owners out there who would greatly benefit from the new tape stock.  I'd bet 
that switching to this tape stock  could fix a multitude of problems which 
people would normally attribute to bad pinch rollers, adjustments needed, 
etc.  I know that there are some Tron owners out there who have lost interest 
because of the constant adjustments required in order to play the thing, and 
I can hear the badly adjusted Trons on some of the recordings I receive from 
people. 

Martin responded the very next day with his half price *tape amnesty* offer, 
which apparently was met with a collective yawn from the list.  This is 
actually a pretty good deal.  You get to replace your set with the vintage 
70's EMI 561 tape stock  (i.e., no more wobblies) which is no longer made, 
any 3 sounds you want, for half price - and you don't even have to go to 
Toronto or Philly to pick them up this time.  I guess the only possible 
downside to this offer is that you have to give up your existing tape set, 
but if you are constantly making adjustments like I was, this is the way to 
go.  Oh well,  I'm saving up to do the LH side of my MKII.  Could take me a 
while though - I'm out of pennies and Martin couldn't do a half price deal 
for the MKII tapes  :-(   


That's OK, just save me some of the good stuff,  Martin.


Ken M.