Mellotronists

At 19:54 06/01/03 -0800, bob.snyder wrote:

>This is from Mark Vail's 'Vintage Synthesizers':

<snip>

> > The choir and strings are really frightening," Wakeman gushed in a
> > Keyboard interview dated March '76.

This reads very similarly to an article in Melody Maker, July 10th 1976.
I'll try and get it scanned in over the next week or so.


> > with the teething problems." At the time there were "30 to 35 working
> > models" in the world by Wakeman's count, and there certainly haven't
> > been many more since.
> >
>Nic, was RW padding the tally or is it possible that there are more?

I'm pretty sure this is padding - I recall making the rear panels, where the
mains went in, and stamping the serial numbers - I numbered up to
20, I know that the last 4/5 were never used, we had a couple of oddities
lying around and the first one was not serialed as far as I remember.

I'm pretty certain 13 is the total number of useable, playable(??) machines,
but I must admit that after 27 years memory may play tricks.

What I'll do is stick a page on my web site with the 'known' machines, and see
if my investigations through Rick, Dave Biro et al give any further info 
(I'm not
sure it will:-)

>Fwiw, there is one in the Audities Collection which I believe is Dave
>Kean's. See
>http://www.audities.org/index.htmlhttp://www.audities.org/index.html

I think this is the one mellotrongirl (sorry - don't know name) referred 
to, and that
Frank Samagaio identified as #007 (Thanks, by the way Frank).

So there's at least 4 accounted for - Rick quite possibly trashed his, a 
couple went to
Tangerine Dream - god only knows what became of those, I think one 
(possibly of those
two) is in a museum (Frankfurt??), but of the others I don't know.

But certainly there were not 30-35. We didn't have enough parts to make 
that many,
and I can't really see anyone forking out to make more later than I was 
involved - Wakeman
had pretty well lost patience, (and money), the invasion of poly moog et al 
was underway,
(not that they're the same thing, but they obfuscated the market) so it's 
very, very unlikely.


Best Regards,

Nic

Birotron #009 still awaiting rebuild :-(