Having been a member of this group and all of the
previous incarnations for around a decade now, I've seen the same questions crop
up over and over again, and I've been guilty of re-asking them from time to time
myself. In some of the earlier groups there were people that really took
exception to the occasional repetitions but after all of this time, I've
realized that for me, the group really represents a repository of most of the
interesting Mellotronic trivia that exists. While there may be a few that
have every bit of all of the tidbits of information that we enjoy, a lot of us
don't always have them at immediate grasp in reach of our recall and
having the group is a convenient way of being able to "google" a really deep
pool of information for something that's esoteric enough it might take a really
long time to find on the real Google. So, at this point I enjoy seeing a
lot of them. Stuff like the "Watcher of the
Skies" thing may have somewhat tarnished over the years, but a lot of these
little anecdotes are still enjoyable little reminders of once known but now
forgotten trivia. So, everybody, thanks for that, it's really an important
part of the group for me.
As for the sampler/tape thing, I think that once
you record the sample back on to tape, the Mellotron's electronics hardware
itself is what creates that unique audio vibe and that is why it
sounds like a Mellotron. What I would really be interested in is taking a
Mellotron, recording it digitally at maximum fidelity, and then hearing the
samples and the actual Mellotron they were sampled from being A/B'd to each
other through the same monitoring system and signal path. And no, while I
have a couple high-end sampling instruments, I just don't mess with samples
and the time it would take for me to become proficient enough to be able to
undertake that experiment myself is more than I can spare at this
age!