The Mellotron Group

Sean,

Where are you located?  I am in Stockton.  I have been involved in electronics since the 70's.  I was more involved
in consulting and project management the last couple of decades.  I am now searching for more work (like a lot of
us on this list apparently :)).  The only organ repair guys I knew from this area were Tom Delasou (who used to sell
Mellotrons at his store (Valley Organ) here in Stockton in the 70's....at least he had one floor model...don't know if
he ever actually sold one) and Fred Coe in Lodi (I probably have the spellings wrong).  I am currently working on
rebuilding a recording studio (24 track 2" analog and 196 track ProTools digital) and doing sound gigs (no real money
in either.....).  I used to work on Hammonds and all kinds of other keyboards but it was never my main source of income.
I heard you mention San Joaquin Valley and figured you may be local.....

Gary


From: newmellotrongroup@yahoogroups.com [mailto:newmellotrongroup@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Sean
Sent: Friday, June 10, 2011 4:32 PM
To: newmellotrongroup@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [newmellotrongroup] Four things: please help



Firstly: how can I obtain "Mk II Italian Accordion" samples? Neither M-Tron nor the Pinder CD have it, which is quite a bummer when I want to learn those early Moodies licks. The easiest, I think, would be to get unadulterated .wav files that I can then compile into a soundfont real easy.

Second: this is aimed more at the repair guys like Frank I think; where should I start if I'm trying to teach myself audio-electronics repair and such. I contacted the one (and apparently only) organ repair guy in the San Joaquin Valley about apprenticing and he's apparently way too busy. My father is an industrial electrician, so I got the basics of electronics, what a diode does, what a resistor does, etc. What neither of us understand is what does a 1k ohm resistor do to an audio signal as compared to a 10k ohm resistor, so forth. Where do I start to learn?

Thirdly: related; where could I track down the schematic for a Conn Caprice 432. I've been browsing the net and nothing seems to be available. Conn has been out of business for a while. I want to start work on this organ, even if it's relatively simple things like replacing caps.

Fourth: What exactly does the tone knob do to the audio signal? I keep reading places that it's a lowpass trim starting at 10kHz. When I try to recreate this digitally using audiounits lowpass filter at 10kHz I don't get anything close to the effect of the tone knob as it works in M-Tron. What am I not knowing?

Thanks all
-Sean