The Mellotron Group

"Feels kind of cheesy" is an awfully subjective comment. People who are 
unused to Mellotrons usually say they feel horrible the first time they play 
one. Does it feel like a Mellotron?  That's the question.  I just don't 
think that samples needing to be reloaded at powerup is a big deal, it takes 
about thirty seconds to load it full.  It holds three sounds at a time like 
an M400 and you can crossfade between them like an M400 and they also have 
dedicated pitch and tone controls.  That they have not made it an open 
architecture sampler is a boutique builder's way of protecting a proprietary 
operating system, and I would do the same thing.  They obviously don't want 
it to be a generic sampler, they only want Mellotron sounds coming from it. 
From their literature there are three sets of sounds available, the vintage 
set which comes with the instrument at no extra cost, and also the 
smoothed-out set that sounded so fake and the TD set, both of which cost 
less then two hundred dollars each for what looks like fifteen or twenty 
sounds or so.  Plus, you can put nearly all of those sounds on one Flash 
card so you can leave your CD ROMs at home.  They also read and save the 
M-Tron sounds which cost another hundred.  So, for a little over $3000 you 
can have reasonably real sounds, an operationally close similarity to an 
M400, and convenience and portability.  It all comes down to the Eighties 
argument about sampled pianos vs. real pianos.  I love my Kurzweil 250, and 
I love real pianos too.  Which one is more useful to gig with is a personal 
decision.  It's what you do with it that counts, not what you do it with.


>> I have been told this by musicians I respect who have played it, I
>> have been told it feels kind of cheesy and has one great flaw. It will
>> not retain samples. They must be reloaded every time it is turned on.
>> Also, sample access seems to be limited to those provided (at
>> substantial expense I've been told) by the manufacturer, or M-Tron
>> samples. That to me seem pretty solid evidence.
>>