Mellotronists

>I myself have entertained the notion of "inventing" a miniature
>Mellotron about the size of a cheapo Magnus toy organ and utilizing
>cassette tape and cassette tape heads.

Who hasn't thought about something like this...and on more than just one 
drunken design session?  :-)

In Keyboard mag a while back was a single tape 'tron...someone had rigged a 
cassette deck to a keyboard that controlled the tape speed.  Monophonic and 
I'm sure horrible sounding.  :-)

>I thought about it being a
>four track, but the trick would be to record the tracks in the same
>direction, let alone the playback heads being available only in mono
>and precise enough to align properly.

A readily available 4-track cassette recorder (Yamaha, Tascam) would do for 
recording the tapes.  For playing back I'm sure there are cheap 4-track 
cassette heads floating about (I've seen them in car cassette 
decks).  Yeah, avoid the head moving mechanism and go with a 4-channel mixer.

I imagine one could devise a rack mechanism to hold tapes, even in the 
cassette shells.  It would need a new drive mechanism to keep it compact, 
though, maybe along the lines of the Chamberlin.

No problem on key width, just space the cassettes.

...kl...M400 #805, don't you mean "space cadets"?

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