Mellotronists

I'm especially glad to hear Mr. Biro is appreciative of the 
revitalized interest in his invention. It crossed my mind that if he 
sunk a lot of money into this project and it bankrupted him, he'd be 
reluctant to talk about it--chalking it up to a pipedream gone bad. 
As I mentioned before, Dave Kean found him around 1992 in Florida, 
stating that Biro was living in a trailer and just barely getting 
enough $$ to get by.

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. 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. At least with a two-track, you 
could make your own tapes on any cassette recorder, left or right 
channel. At least that way, you'd have control of attack. Then 
there's the rack changing bit...it's got to be a bit simpler than 
popping the lid and messing with the four thumbscrews. It'd have to 
be some kind of cartridge plugin/pullout, snaps-into-place kind of 
deal. The keyboard itself would need to be half-size, and that would 
be difficult to play unless you have midget kiddie fingers. But then 
again a lot of toy keyboards have two octaves within the space of a 
foot across or so. Again, I want it it to be a toy and be small, 
nothing too intimidating. Bakelite art deco chipboard crap design, 
yes? I'd market this to Mattel, but I think they are still reeling 
from their Optigan (ad)ventures...

>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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