Mellotronists

At 18:31 06/01/03 +0000, mellotrongirl <mellotrongirl@...> wrote:
>The only one I ever saw was at Kean's house when he lived in Moses
>Lake. It made a BIG, BIG sound! Scared the tar out of me! It was pure
>and loud! I heard only something like eight were ever made,

Any idea what serial number it is,, or is this a while back?

I worked on building them, not design so don't flame me for their
peculiarities (err, I mean failings). We made 13 excluding Dave Biro's
original, a while back I tracked down 3 in a friend's garage
in rather a sorry state, I've got a project to rebuild at least 1 of them.

Curiously they are numbered 009, 011 and 015 and I can't remember
how 015 got there, I think we might have had production problems with
a couple.  A couple of pictures are at:
http://www.atthepub.demon.co.uk/birotron/

They're not very good, they were taken after a really boozy session
with the friend mentioned above who worked with me on them. We spent
several nostalgic hours remembering the fun we had back then when
he revealed that he had 3 in his garage, so we staggered out with digital
camera and took a couple of pics.

The whole Birotron episode was little more than vaguely organised chaos,
and the story is probably worth writing if only for humour value.

>and the
>guy who invented/made them was living the rough life in a trailer
>park in Florida or something like that. Biro is the man!! I wonder
>how he connected with the mere handful of bands that used the
>Birotron.

I'm trying to get in touch with Dave, and indeed anyone else Birotron
related - I don't have a great deal of time but I'll keep the list informed
if it's not too off-topic - comments welcome.

As far as I can recall the only ones originally actually shipped and played
in anger (yes, in anger usually!) were to Wakeman (of course) and Tangerine
Dream, but what happened to them all, well all 13, is a matter I'm looking 
into.

If anyone knows of any Birotron recordings other than Wakeman's I'd love
to hear about them!



>At 12:49 06/01/03 -0600, JS wrote:
>Oh lord, tronchick, never never never never use "Bi" and "curious" in the
>same header on this list.

Chuckle.


>Read Frank Samagio's "The Mellotron Book" for more Birotron information, but
>it seems the magic ingredient was Rick Wakeman's endorsement and cash that
>got the whole thing going.  Weren't there about 20 made, folks?

This is just about it. Dave Biro approached Wakeman (I think he hassled his way
backstage at a gig) with his prototype which used 20 stand alone automobile 
type
8-track players in a *big* frame. He convinced Wakeman that it was worth 
investing
in and so production was planned to be in High Wycombe, where Wakeman had
a small studio, Packhorse Case Co, and a handful of other small companies.

The original Birotron actually sounded pretty good,
and even the production ones could sound pretty reasonable. In fact given the
circumstances under which they were built I think they were pretty darned good.

To give you a flavour, when we asked the boss (who shall remain nameless)
for a digital frequency counter (pretty essential for designing an electronic
instrument really) he pointed to the (only) little digital mutimeter we had and
asked if we could modify it, when asked for an oscilloscope he looked at 
the ageing
TV that was essential for the Packhorse case guys to watch the racing on,
and mumbled something about an article he'd seen in Wireless World on how 
to convert
your telly into a 'scope back in the 60s.

We possessed the only coffee machine that I know of whose cash box was usually
devoid of cash but frequently contained IOUs on scraps of paper when someone
was short of a quid or two to put on the horses.

It was a nightmare in terms of professional manufacturing but a great laugh.

Must get round to writing it all down.................



Best Regards,

Nic

Birotron #009 still awaiting rebuild :-(