Mellotron

A friend who runs a vin­tage instru­ment shop, the cli­en­tele is of which is such that the shop scarcely needs me to flog it on this blog, acquired a mel­lo­tron recently. I learned a couple of things about the mel­lo­tron today.

First off, my long-held sup­pos­i­tion that mel­lo­trons used tape loops was entirely wrong. While the concept of a tape loop looks good in one’s head, it is appar­ently imprac­tic­able in real­ity. Pressing a key on the mel­lo­tron, rather, engages a tape strip, which runs over the play­back head that press­ing the key engages, and the phys­ic­al tape in the strip actu­ally drops into a nar­row box, and at the end of the eight-second dur­a­tion of the tape strip is SUPPOSED to be auto­mat­ic­ally rewound for replay. As it turns out, one of the issues with a mel­lo­tron (and anoth­er thing I learned was that mel­lo­trons have LOTS OF ISSUES) is when the tape strip drops down into the box and just stays there, and then you get a key that’s just silent when you press it. This ten­ded to com­prom­ise my attemp­ted by-ear recre­ation of the open­ing of “In The Court Of The Crimson King.” I found this discouraging. 

Note the A‑B-C switch on the upper right of the met­al pan­el of the mel­lo­tron. That changes the set­ting of the record­ing. The recor­ded instru­ments on the tape cart­ridge cur­rently installed in this mel­lo­tron are flute and a string sec­tion. The third record­ing is of a choir, called “voice.” However, if you toggle the switch to put it between A and B, say, you can get a kind of “mix” of voice and strings; toggle between B and C and you get a mix of strings and flute. This is not unlike what gui­tar­ists dis­covered of the ostens­ibly three-position pickup toggle switch on Fender Stratocasters. The switch selec­ted neck, middle or bridge pickup, and that was it. But if you poised the switch between pos­i­tions one and two, they got a mix of the neck and middle pickup. Between pos­i­tions two and three, a mix of middle and bridge pickups. Eventually Fender got the mes­sage and made the switch a five-position gee­gaw. But the action on the ’75 Strat I handled today was so sweet I’d be will­ing to live with the three-position switch.

But we’re talk­ing mel­lo­tron. Which is, in prac­tice, a wonky, dif­fi­cult instru­ment. “It’s ridicu­lous,” noted thefriend I came to the shop with, “but it’s a retro thing, so every­body with Stupid Rockstar Money wants one.” He, a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian of some repute, was able to con­jure a few better-than-passable runs out of the thing. This irrit­ated me a bit, as did his com­pet­ent runs on a ukelele. “Oy,” I whiged in a stage whis­per to S., the shop’s over­seer. “Even HE plays gui­tar bet­ter than me. He’s not even sup­posed to play gui­tar. He’s a front man.”

“What are you in your band?” S. asked. 

“The front man.”

“So what are you com­plain­ing for?”

I shrugged.

Apparently when S. bought the mel­lo­tron he did not acquire an orna­ment­al side pan­el that fea­tures a paint­ing of a uni­corn on it. This item is still in nego­ti­ation. I will provide an update if called for. In the mean­time, here is a PDF of the Owner’s Manual for the 400N.