Mellotron and Moog synthesizer - Progressive Rock Music Forum

This was posted on Facebook, and I thought the song was very nice for 1971!

"In 1970 I ordered a Mellotron they had not started producing them in mass and they told me I would get the first one they made. I took delivery in January 71. it’s possible this is the first music recorded in the US on an M400. I’m no Mike Pinder please be kind. I’m now 74 years old and my feelings get hurt easily."

I am not a Robot, I'm a FREE MAN!!

Hi,

Several answers to the OP can be found in the article I wrote quite a few years ago in the blogs section covering most of the musical instruments frequently used in classic Prog Rock:

http://www.progarchives.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=98771

To summarize some points here: there exist two modern and improved replicas of the Mellotron M400, still analog with magnetic tapes, the ones manufactured by the new Mellotron company run by Marcus Resch and Dave Kean (called Mellotron Mk VI, not sure if they are still being produced), and the Streetly Electronics M4000 built by one of the sons of Les Bradley, one of the 3 Bradley brothers who manufactured the original Mellotrons.

The new Mellotron company also produces a digital version the M4000D.

A bit later (from late 1974) came the Birotron of Dave Biro and co-funded by Rick Wakeman, which while providing several improvements over the Tron, by the time it was ready it had become obsolete in front of the newer instruments like String Machines, the RMI Keyboard Computer or the first polyphonic synths.

Also in 1974 came out the first String Machines which were much more practical and reliable than the Tron, with the Solina String Ensemble and a bit later others like the Freeman String Symphonizer, the Logan / Hohner String Melody, the Elka Rhapsody or the Roland RS202.

These were arguably the first presets synthesizers, which around 1975-76 started to include other kinds of instruments and were generically called Poly-Ensembles (such as the ARP Omni / Omni-2 or the Korg PE-1000 / 2000).

Then in 1975 came the first programmable polyphonic synths with the Polymoog and the huge and very expensive Yamaha GX-1.

As for the Moogs, not so many people used the big and expensive modulars, besides Keith Emerson, Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Tomita etc. The really popular Moog synth was the Minimoog.

After the release of the Polymoog in 1975, which was a commercial and quality failure, Moog started to lag behind the competition (not the least because Bob Moog sold the company to Norlin, who did not know how to manage it properly). Yamaha soon released the more affordable CS-80, Oberheim their 4-Voice / 8-Voice, Korg their PS-3100 / 3200 / 3300... up to the hugely successful Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 in 1978.

It took Moog until 1982 until they could release a polysynth which could really compete with those, it was the Memorymoog, which finally with 6 voices of polyphony and a good memory to store 100 patches, was what so many Moog users had been waiting for, a sort pf polyphonic Minimoog with programs memory.

But in 1983 Yamaha changed the paradigm from analog to digital with their DX-7, and the world of synths would never be the same. Moog spent the 80s in agony until they closed by bankruptcy in 1993.

In 2002 Bob Moog re-acquired the rights of the Moog brand and re-opened by launching the new Minimoog Voyager.

A more detailed story, complemented with many curiosities and anecdotes can be found in my book "The Musical Instruments of Progressive Rock; An Illustrated Guide"

https://www.amazon.com/Musical-Instruments-Progressive-Rock/dp/8413385997

Edited by Gerinski - November 20 2020 at 09:30