4 track tape heads are on their way. operation Tape Loop Organ is a go
my idea is to have each track be a voice and have them able to be independently switched on or off so you can have any or all the voices going at once. the mellotron has all 35 of its tape heads wired in series which i think is very cool. i would have assumed parallel and im gonna try wiring mine in parallel just to see. so thats 37 4 track tapes, each track on its own bus with its own eq/preamp maybe? idk! mellotron just used one signal path for all of it but i believe it uses mono heads that you physically move to switch/blend between tracks. for mine i wanna have a simple lil vol/pan 4 channel mixer built into the control panel to mix the busses together. maybe i'll have the mixer mixing the pre-preamp signals??? idk if that would work tho. each track could have their own mono preamp/eq and then those are mixed into a stereo line amp/eq. this isnt even touching on the mechanics of the situation. i think i may be able to get my hands on a suitable motor for free but we'll have to wait and see. i have no idea how much power it will need to spin 37 tape loops simultaneously. having pressing the keys push the heads against the tape will also add some friction but probably a lot less than what the mellotron did with pressing the keys engaging a pinch roller that moved the tape. each key pressed added essentially a whole tape mechanism to the drive mechanism and you could only play so many notes before the motor started to struggle and things slowed down. with all the loops already always engaged and moving, the friction added by just pressing a head against the tape will theoretically be far less by comparison. im also using much thinner tapes with less surface area. i think my idea just has a lot less drag to account for while in operation, but will probably take more to get started.