Mellotronists

In a message dated 3/23/2004 11:57:52 AM Eastern Standard Time, 
jkorb@... writes:

> Over the weekend we had a small gathering of MONEYPIT at Casa Korb in
> VT.
> 
> Awesome weekend (even if we did get snowed/iced in and had to stay an
> extra 
> day---awww, shucks (well, I didn't mind :-) )).
> 
> =======================================================================

An excellent time was had by Jerry, Frank, KL and myself in Vermont this 
weekend.
I think we're getting this 'Tron maintenance thing down.  No wobblies heard 
toward the end of the weekend, only well adjusted 'Tron. And this was on four 
machines (three with double keyboards).

KL's project M400 was sounding very nice, he truly brought this one back from 
the dead.  I think a lot of that has to do with the brand new motor he 
installed, which seems to have eliminated any drag effect from playing multiple 
notes (and the *creeping whoosh*).  Of course, he used the alcohol dunk treatment 
on the pinch rollers, followed by the "power flick and spin" to free up the 
sticking ones.   This was followed by the Caig rubber rejuvenator treatment.  
I'm sure he'll have pictures of this on his web site.

Franks' Pindertron came out great, nice work Jerry.  It looked almost new, 
having received new veneer and flowcoat treatment on the bad parts of the 
original cabinet.  The cycling was flawless.  Jerry said that he had tested it over 
1000 times.  This MKII has a solid state preamp, which was there when MP was 
playing it.  Lack of speakers and power amps made this MKII a bit lighter, and 
Jerry installed balanced output jacks, which will come in handy when Frank 
uses them to record directly through his mixer.  He can also send the output of 
the MKII to an external amplifier if he wants to.  We were running it through 
Jerry's JK MK-6, and it sounded nice!  It included a new set of red backed EMI 
tapes, double leads (LH & RH), sounds chosen by Frank.  Thanks, Martin!  
Thanks also to JB of Streetly for his assistance on this project.

Highpoint of the trip for me:  The look on Frank's face when his MKII was 
*unveiled* on Saturday.

Lowpoint:  I took a snowball to the crotch.

I recorded some of the joyous noise on minidisc, so some of that may end up 
on a website.  No "Watcher", I promise (I'll edit that out) !


Ken M.
MKII #247
M400 #1217