"When the company was sold back in the day, Streetly couldn't continue to sell Mellotrons, they had to call it something else.. Novatron. Even though by definition is was still a Mellotron."
This is because in the distribution agreement with Sound Sales, the name Mellotron was unwittingly sold as part of assigning rights to the American Sound Sales company, and not putting in clauses that Streetly still retained the Mellotron name.
American law and British law have major differences. If Sound Sales was based in Britain, this wouldn't have happened that way.
In both cases of 'Novatron' (nova meaning new) and 'Mellotron', the licensing refers to analog instruments.
Digital is completely a whole different animal.
If you go buy some old movies on VHS, you will get your movie (both visuals and soundtrack) in it's entirety.
But if you try to buy that same movie on DVD (blue ray or standard), you might find 're-mastering', or edits in the visuals of the movie as well as especially in the soundtrack. That's because these tampered scenes (which might show a logo or have a piece of music in the background soundtrack) have not been cleared for 'digital rights management' by the copyright owners.
Therefore, an alternate version of the movie is released which is legally defined as not the same original movie.
It is legally a 'variation' of the original.
That's why you might have a 'theatrical version' or 'directors cut'. Those are not just nicknames. They are different legal entities altogether.
And it gets worse and worse the more you delve into it (deleted scenes, aspect ratio, music, sound effects etc.).
Anyway this (very indirectly) relates to Mellotrons in that the physical laws and properties of Mellotrons are not retained by the digital emulations. There are no tapes moving.
Therefore they are not and cannot be Mellotrons regardless of what business and marketing interests would say.
'Science law' always overrules 'business' definitions which are usually at the whim of marketing or economics, and are notoriously and inherently unreliable and untrustworthy because of their changing nature.
At the end of the day, if you're happy with the sound and you can make music with it, it should satisfy without the name 'Mellotron' being invoked.
If someone wants to call it a Mellotron, fine, but it's not really. I know it's kind of stupid.....but that's what this system in our world has done.
But....if the original Mellotrons had been as common as say the butterfly chair, and there were widespread hybrid analog/digital Mellotrons in the 80's, then the name would become like 'Kleenex' or 'Hoover' and wouldn't matter as much. It could have been assigned to the digital realm more easier.
Anyway, I'm not for or against either side of the logic - you can argue either way because the sampling concept is still retained. But 'science' and 'law' will not accept it... at all....ever.
This is probably also why you always read 'Hammond Organ' on records instead of just 'organ' (because a Hammond Organ is not a 'pipe' organ)
Man, I almost always get a headache discussing this.
