GMEDIA M-Tron VST 2 Mac

VSTi remake of the old prog rock fave the Mellotron. Software version 3.1 for Mac OS9, used with Cubase VST/32 v5.1r1. I'm a bit of a keyboard player but not great. The M-Tron sticks to the 8 second sound length that the original Mellotron tape tapes limited you to and as such you have to use a different keyboard technique, which happens to suite my style of playing. I love the Mellotron sound from bands like Genesis, Yes, King Crimson etc. however the music I make ranges from Industrial to dance (techno-ish) to pseudo-classical, so I'm applying those famous sounds to different styles. Available from www.gmediamusic.com

Installed first time, no problems. No obvious copy protection mallarky to contend with. A joy. Graphic interface is a Mellotron 400 with integral 'wear & tear' tea/coffee mug stains! Three knobs - Volume, Tone and Pitch (wonder what they do?) and three-way toggle switch which opens a flap to reveal Attack and Release adjustments (if required) and sound presets selector. There is a brief printed manual which tells you how to install etc. (real no-brainer this one) and explains controls & individual sounds in more detail.

This sounds great. The people at GMedia must be dedicated nutters as they've cleaned up original Mellotron tapes without making them sterile. You get wow. You get flutter. What a joy. This thing doesn't cheat with pitching a few samples over the key range, every key is an individual sample from a real Mellotron, which creates some great inconsistencies and character. The output appears as stereo in VST but is mono (of course). There are also currently two extra volumes of 'Tape Banks' (#33 each) which I find essential - there are some great/mad sounds to be had here. I find that putting the M-Tron through an amp simulator plug-in can be great to give you that authentic Mk2 sound, as the Mk2 didn't have line outs, so its internal speaker had to be mic'ed to record it.

If you like the Mellotron sound then unless you've got money to burn then this is really your only option (a new Mark VI will cost $5200 and a reconditioned original Mk2 or M400 anything up to $8000). You have to be careful when loadin this beastie as each 'tape bank' can use anything up to 27 Mb, so assign as much memory to VST as possible, especially if you want to use more than one instance. When I first installed v2.05 that worked fine. I downloaded v3.0 from the GMedia website and that crashed my Mac. I emailed GMedia and a day later they had v3.1 which they emailed to me, and that crashed. They then sent a corrective patch after I emailed them about the 3.1 crash and now everything is fine - nice to see a company working quickly to correct bugs.