|
|
|
|
BEFORE In an ironic twist, we've got two Mellotrons at the Mellotron Ranch, each one owned in the past by a different former keyboard player for the Moody Blues! These machines are now in the hands of new owners, but they managed to migrate temporarily to the wilds of Vermont to be pampered and cared for by the Mellotron Professor. This was to be a dual-reveal, one "real", one "virtual". So let's take a look at the two machines "before" the work was done.
Although the cabinet was pretty good, the Mark II's electronics weren't in great shape. * Click above to see the pictures of the insides. Do you see all the extra wires strung all over the place? Yep, we've seen that before. It's an attempt to quiet the noise in the Mellotron by grounding it all over the place. The cause of that turns out to be miswired head blocks for the most part, but there are other things in the Mark I/II series Mellotrons that can be modified to decrease the noise. Given that this machine is to be used in a recording studio, a great deal of effort was put into making this machine as quiet as possible. * When Jerry powered up the machine for the first time, all the magic blue smoke came out of one of the amplifiers. oops... * There was a variety of other issues (like cycling---or lack thereof) plaguing the machine.
It was decided that #5/104 would have its electronics restored to Mark V specification and it would have a general mechanical check-out to make sure it was working OK. The custom cabinet, though, would stay as-is.
So that was Jerry's assignment over the spring/summer 2006---to get these two beasties into shape. Let's see how it was done, starting with the Morazotron...-->
|
