Mellotron - History

History

Although tape samplers had been explored in research studios, the first commercially available keyboard-driven tape instruments were built and sold by California-based Harry Chamberlin.

The origin of the Mellotron can be traced to when Chamberlin's sales agent, Bill Fransen, brought two of Chamberlin's Musicmaster 600 instruments to England in 1962 to search for someone who could manufacture 70 matching tape heads for future Chamberlins. He met Frank, Norm and Lesley Bradley of tape engineering company Bradmatic Ltd, who said they could improve on the original design. Harry Chamberlin was unhappy with the fact that someone overseas was copying his idea, and that one of his own people was the reason for this, but a deal was eventually struck between Chamberlin and the Bradley brothers. This resulted in the formation of a subsidiary company named Mellotronics, which produced the first Mellotrons in Aston, Birmingham, England. The music sessions for Mellotrons were recorded by the Eric Robinson Organisation at IBC Studios, 35 Portland Place in London England. Mellotronics had offices there and the recordings were made using a customized 9 into 3 recording desk built by IBC's Denis King. Magician David Nixon partly funded it. Manufacturing company Bradmatic later took on the name Streetly Electronics. By the early 1970s 100 of the instruments were assembled and sold by EMI under exclusive license. Many years later, following financial and trademark troubles through a U.S. distribution agreement, the Mellotron name became unavailable and resided with the American based Sound Sales, and later manufactured by Bomar Fabricating Ltd. while Streetly manufactured instruments after 1976 were sold under the name Novatron.

Throughout the 1970s, the Mellotron had a major impact on rock music, particularly the 35 note (G-F) model M400. The M400 version was released in 1970 and sold over 1800 units, becoming a trademark sound of the era's progressive bands. The earlier 1960s MK II units were made for the home and the characteristics of the instrument attracted a number of celebrities. Among the early Mellotron owners were Princess Margaret, Peter Sellers, King Hussein of Jordan and Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. According to Robin Douglas-Home, Princess Margaret "adored it; he positively loathed it, and was supremely bored whenever she went near it."

Mellotrons were normally pre-loaded with string instrument and orchestral sounds, although the model 400's tape bank could be removed with relative ease by the owner and loaded with banks containing different sounds including percussion loops, sound effects, or synthesizer-generated sounds, to generate polyphonic electronically generated sounds in the days before polyphonic synthesizers.

In the late 1990s, a Calgary-based company began producing new Mellotrons. These new MKVI Mellotrons were similar to the M400, with some modifications. The company also released sample discs featuring WAV files of each individual note sampled from an original Mellotron. These files, when played using a sampler, enable keyboardists to recreate a part of the sound of the original Mellotrons using cheaper and more reliable modern keyboards.

In 2009, Streetly Electronics released the M4000. The most recent machine to offer a cycling mechanism, an updated design of the system used in the 1960s MK 1, MK 2 and M300 machines.