Hello! The depth of your knowledge is amazing! Is there an information how the factory preset buttons are hard-wired - what should be the value of the sliders in each layer panel to achieve the factory presets?

Electrolytic capacitors - the kryptonite of electronics throughout the ages!

The Beatles used one on the first record I bought - Strawberry Fields Forever in 1967. Sounded amazing then - and ever since.

4:49 I knew these were tape-based but i wasn’t prepared for how funny the visual of the tape moving actually is. It really is just a bunch of tape players in there! What a machine.

Cool instrument. FYI, from the pipe organ world the Mixture on these doesn’t refer to tweaking the mix - it’s a stop consisting of multiple short pipes (usually at 2 2/3, 2, 1 3/5 or 1 ft) that adds sparkle to the tonal ensemble.

You are

Nice!

What that was a great overview Thank You I have always wondered how a Melotron works 😊

The fact that this lovely lady knows this much about an odd and beautiful instrument that was defunct before she was born totally blows my mind.

Even though I know how a Mellotron works, I've played one, I've seen inside one, still every time I see a video like this I am just full of absolute amazement at the whole thing, haha. The digital recreations are great, but there's just something physical about the real thing that makes them extra special.

Buen video, me ha servido para enterarme como funciona. Me encanta su sonido. Muchas gracias.

What an amazing instrumentn

I have seen The Musical Box, a Gabriel era Genesis tribute band. I love seeing them live because there is virtually no other place to see someone play a Mellotron.

ya don't want to go sticking your hands in an old mellotron.. its a terrible way to go. and can take up to 7 seconds

Damn girl 😏😏😏😏

Are you drinking all the milk ?

Wow, gorgeousness 🤯

It's, essentially, a harmonium.

Do you make any music?

Was that "For My Lady" at the end? The Moody blues were a pioneer of the instrument after all

waaooooowwwww!!!!!! im so impressed... you sound like youre really enraptured by the machines you play with!!

I played my friend’s Prophet 10 many, many years ago in the 80’s. Loved it. Made a cassette recording while playing that I still have. Wanted to buy one but in those days way out of my range. Was very disappointed that Sequential didn’t make the new Prophet 10 more like this. Would have bought one. They missed the entire idea of being able to play two distinct sounds on two key beds. Even putting out a limited edition of this synth would be awesome.

Thank you for this.

Excellent video!

Excellent video! I've heard mellotron tapes referred to as loops. Do some mellotron tapes actually loop around to hold the note?

Are you married Alison? 🌹

Imagine the caterwauling of a mellotron and a theramin playing together… 🫨

The mellotron has an incredible character... we often use the 4000D in our productions, thank you for the insight into the original! Well done.❤

Hi there. I absolutely loved this tutorial. My favorite is the Mark 2 but this was wonderful. Extremely informative. I've loved the tron ever since I first heard it in the late 60s and through the 70s and just did one of my radio shows featuring songs with mellotron. (i've done that at different times over the years). Anyway, not to be long-winded… Thank you so much for having this video available. It was really fun! Very touchy piece of equipment, eh? 😊🎹 --Gene

80 bucks for such a chip is so expensive even if i understand why they are so expensive 😅 I just wonder if using a modern MCU is a possible replacement given some re-wiring ?

wait this channel is a god damn gold mine !

this is amazing !

Thank you! Excellent demonstration! I had no idea how the mellotron worked! 🙂👍

Fascinating

Fabulous presentation, much appreciated here!

interesting how much the mellotron sound is *still* recognized, utilized, and appreciated by so many excellent musicians

Very intresting, looks like you no longer post video's saddly

LOVE the Fisher-Price in the background, btw. NICE touch!

I've always wanted my own Mellotron and wondered how one actually worked. NOT AT ALL as I had imagined it. I'm guessing it would need a personal technician to keep it in shape. Thank YOU!

This is great! I was always curious how the CS-80 did what it did outside of the CPU/DAC paradigm. One wonders if Tom Oberheim ever contemplated going down this road before Sequential's CPU breakthrough and just thought the complexity was a nonstarter. Japanese manufacturing had a unique culture during this period (mid 60s to mid 80s). Everything from instruments and electronics to motorcycles and cars to bicycles. I have several Yamaha instruments from this period (synths and drums...). Great quality instruments that still work perfectly. Lots of unique problem solving that went the extra mile to squeeze every bit of functionality out of the technology they had.

So..the duration of one tone note is limited by the lenght of the tape..right?

Clever lady! 👏👏❤️❤️❤️

Hilarious how some so called "expert" can't even set a mic up properly to record some video. I mean, do they not hear that annoying buzz etc.... Amateurs!

Thanks for this video - love your knowledge and passion for vintage synths! Re the Mellotron, it’s like one of those animal-powered contraptions from “The Flintstones” - it’s really the first “Stone Age sampler” from the era just before cheap semiconductors became available. I wonder if some of the inspiration came from tone-wheel organs, which have a similarly novel fusion of mechanical and analog technology under the hood. And, I would have loved to see how they recorded those sample tape strips!

Nicely done!

Wow I would really like to learn how to restore these instruments. I am a piano technician for acoustic pianos. I just had a major geek attack watching this. Where do you get parts like motors? How often do tapes break?

NOTHING else has the magical sound of a Mellotron!

To copy each key individually would take up virtually no memory, its not touch sensitive (if you press a key hard or soft it will sound the same!

I kept waiting for a tinkle of 'Watcher of the skies' 🙂

nice