Mellotronists

Hi!

Yesterday was M-Day for me. I was out to pick up M400 #160 and bring it home to safe environments. Beautiful! The tape was a standard one with strings, flutes and cello. It sounds exactly the way it should. I quickly checked out some standard things with reverb, echo and running the output through two Vox amps with spring reverbs. It all sounds fantastic.
These are the quirks I will have to deal with:
One key doesn't run steady at all. Must be the pinch roller. I opened it and could feel the pinch roller didn't run freely as it should. What do I do about that?
There is an pronounced key click on another key.
I immediately opened the machine and cleaned the tape heads. The previous owner had never done that - and he was a smoker - so I guess I have some more cleaning to do. The white paint has some cracks. Not that it bothers me so much, but a new layer of paint would be nice.
The machine was last serviced 5 years ago by Streetly. I don't know yet what kind of motor controller it has, but I didn't observe any general problems driving the tapes forward even with many keys pressed down.

And a general question. What is the gospel around here regarding demagnetizers? I have one, but I want to use it correctly if I need to use it at all.

Cheers

(proud to be:)
Frank Carvalho
#160