I plan on purchasing a Voyager, had a MiniMoog, Mellotron, B3 and a few other great and now vintage instruments in the late 60’s to mid 70’s - all gone with the advent of the 80’s. Can you please pet me know what books I could buy to get educate myself about samplers, midi and their useage. I dearly love the sound of the Mellotrons but cannot afford to purchase both a Voyager and an Mtron. I have been recommended to purchase an Akai Z4 plus an inexpensive midi. I am asking for help and advice, I also have a P4 laptop and a G3 Mac.
I have been reading on this forum for awhile now, it is a fantastic source of info, hence my upcoming purchase of the Voyager.
hi gd, here are only a few small tips:
1° don’t forget the Voyager is great, but monophonic; if you don’t mind that you’d definitely get the Voyager - its sound is amazing
2° great 2nd hand samplers are going very cheap nowadays; e.g. a Yamaha A4000 is only about $600-700 or even less (I think)
I appreciate that, thank-you. It was interesting that I was in a music store this past weekend and saleperson was pushing a $5000 kybd. on them. Not once did he ask if they could actually play or just use sound effects. I took their kybg player aside and walked over to an old Juno 2 which had a Rogue beside it. What he really wanted was the “Moog” sound not a reasonable facsimile. Needless to say he walked out with the Rogue and many $ in his pocket. Only a Moog sounds like a Moog I told him, now go home and play with it.
Sage advice!!
You don’t need any advice yourself, you’re an Enlightened One! Nip out and buy your old kit back- especially that 'Tron! I sold TWO in the early '90s just before interest in them (and their cost!) skyrocketed. Talk to the nice guys at Streetly Electronics and buy a refurbed original M400… I think they even have a Canadian agent!
SCx
Well I picked up a Source for a great price, it’s immaculate and decided to try an EMU Orbit 3 and EMU Classic Keys module for the Mellotron sounds - heard one on a few cd’s and they sounded great. Now I’ll have to find a midi kybd that feels comfortable, and a mixer to plug the Moog, Juno 106, Akai dp and 1 or 2 midi kybd’s. I looked at the Behringer mixer and they are very inexpensive and would likely suffice. It’s the midi controller that will take some searching for. I tried 2 yesterday (M-Audio and Endirol?) wasn’t initially taken by them
Wow!!
The Source is a great machine! Have fun… You know where to go for a real Mellotron:
Congrats again on the Source, I’d LOVE to find one!
SC
If you have a computer, you could always buy a GMedia M-Tron - a software version of the Mellotron, which only costs $64 and comes with a full set of great M-Tron sounds, which have been lovingly sampled from a variety of machines. I have one of these, and would recommend it to anyone - stunning. GMedia also have 3 further tape banks available ($55 each), featuring some very rare Tron sounds, including the ones famously used by Genesis, on Watcher of The Skies.
Wishing you all the best.
Actually, it’s quite a ropey old machine and/or tapes that it’s sampled from… They reckonned it was Radiohead’s 'Tron, but it sure needed a service if it was, and I think Mr. Greenwood is a bit more meticulous than to run an instrument in that condition. A real Mellotron sounds far better than the GMedia version, but buried in a mix, it can fool many people much of the time.
A real Mellotron is quite ‘Hi-Fi’!!
SCx
I checked out some of the VST synth yesterday at a store in Toronto dedicated to this. They sounded nice, and I agree they are a great deal as most ppl would have either a Mac or PC that would meet the req’t to use Cubase, Acid, Pro Tools etc. in their home studio. I just couldn’t see playing something like this live. I loved playing my B3, Mtron and mini in the early 70’s - my back is letting me know daily how much fun it was to haul all this not so lightweight gear around 30 years later. I was playing a Mtron just a few weeks ago - it is just something that has to be experienced with the kybd feel, the sound of the motor and tapes being played - others have argued that our memories trick us into thinking that the original Mtron was better sounding than it really was - my experience with many old synths 'cept the Moog is I agree with them to a certain degree but the Mellotron is still a thing of beauty - my back votes for an EMU module for live, my heart is trying to figure a way to explain to my wife just why I need the real thing. Give me a few months I am sure my heart will win out, I have already cleared room for it in my studio.
In the meantime, anyone recommend a good midi controller that doesn’t feel that the keys will break and had some weighted feel.
A quick update, well I picked up the EMU Classic Keys tonight, has some nice sounds on it including various Moog, but as I said I bought it for the Mtron sounds and B3. I have only listened to all through my headphones and they are pretty close, I am suitably impressed, I pluged into my practice amp (100 watt Yorkville Bassman) and darn near blew the doors off the house - forgot to turn the volume down. But… as I said before a Moog cannot be truely replicated and neither can the Mellotron, thanks god I have the Source.