The Mellotrons M 400 sound was not produced digitally - luckily for all of us! Noises, distortion, the dirt : that's exactly what makes the far out sound that attracted so many rock stars of the 60s and 70s. Principally, the M 400 was one of the first sampling keyboards ever built, with the sounds, however, stored on tape. To each of the 35 keys a tape of about three feet length (8 to 9 secs. playing time) is fixed. When a key is pressed, the tape is pulled along the head over a rubber roll. When the tape is released, a spring at the tape's end makes it jump back to its original position. There are three different sounds on each tape : by switching the heads you can exchange them. ( Of course, the AKAI S 1000 doesn't allow this vintage days technique in its little grey box without any scratching tapes ). So the main problems the musician has to cope with are : the tape/head-contact, the vows and flutters of tapes whose rubber rolls are all driven by one motor, and the wearing off of tapes. Yes, these instruments have always been whining, and there have always been alterations of sounds when being played back. And maybe that is why I have always loved them, and why I made up my mind to spend almost a year to render to you what I think is a M 400 and what you can make of its mono sound in the world of stereo sample programming offered by the Akai S series, without doing harm to the original.