Mellotronists

Martin had mentioned to me that my later serial number M400 probably has a
shorter distance between the heads and the rear anchor bar, and this may
affect my start-points! I have never noticed this! I'll have to get out the
tape measure. Ooops bad pun.

To be honest I have never paid any attention to the wax pencil start point
hash marks (rebel that I am) other than to provide a gross indicator of
where I am with a new tape set. I've always done it by ear... whenever I
would get a new tape set on a reel I would do the following:

1. Mount reel in front of machine so it can spin freely (like on a piece of
pipe mounted in a vise, etc.)
2. Take off tron lid, keyboard, install empty frame
3. Stick end of tape under low G across heads, anchor at rear
4. Place keyboard back on, play low G till it is done
5. Snip off tape, remove keyboard, move it to low G#
6. Goto step 4 thirty-four times

The "snip" in setp 5 of course is done with a bit of strategy - I always pay
attention at this point because... well I'm sure we all know how sad it
would be to have to splice a tape in a set that you haven't fully installed
yet!

At this point I have a tron with a bunch of tapes hanging out the front. One
by one I thread them through and anchor them at the front. One thing that I
don't do is to try to pop open the travelling pulley blocks - they are old
and stuck together pretty well, and I don't want to run the risk of messing
them up. Kind of a hassle, but it works.

After all this I go and fine-tune the start points. I like to catch the
beginning of the sounds, but I need to make sure that all 3 tracks get off
to a good start. It does cause some issues at times - there was one
rehearsal for a Swedish band (Anglagard) who were using all three of my
trons. Anna the flautist needed to play some fast lines on the 8-voice
Choir, but when she tried it sounded like this:

"huh huh huh huh huh huh huh"

And the desired sound was this:

"Aaah Aaah Aaah Aaah Aaah"

See I had backed up the start points so each note had a bit of breath at the
beginning, and all she was getting was the breath part! With a pouty
expression (kind of a "will this gig work?" look) she brought this to my
attention. After a moment's thought I yanked the lid off, undid the rear
anchor bar, rolled it once or twice, and put it back on. Happy musician.
Actually their stuff works better if you push into the start even more, to
get:

"Caaah Caaah Caaah Caaah Caaah"

with the pressure pads slapping the tapes to the heads with a little pop.

And this brings up my question - any fun stories about Mellotron tape
out-takes? The way that I load the tapes gives me an opportunity to listen
to the whole recording session (as long as the cat's not in the room). I
know that during the 8-voice Choir the singers crack up laughing at least
once. But when I am done I look at the pile of tape on the floor and realize
that splicing them back together and listening to them again is just a
little too far over the edge from a psychological standpoint.


Best Regards,

- Gene