Mellotronists

After two weeks of eating dust and going nearly blind, it is back 
together and running and all that is left is the tedious adjustments 
to the transport and keys. Besides the satisfaction of a fresh 
appearance, I now know the innards of this thing intimately, 
something you could not gain merely by reading or looking at 
pictures. 
First off let me thank Jerry Korb for sharing his knowledge and 
experiences, and Martin for the "authentic" information, and the 
others on this site that shared their labors. What really seemed to 
slow the work down was constantly stopping to document every step of 
disassembly, notation  and taking pictures, but absolutely necessary 
for future reference. Turns out this unit also had the SSI (un)
modifications. Worst problems were mounts on bottom of spill box and 
motor mounts.  Even though the unit seemed to play fine with a four 
note limit before it fell down, rotted rubber grommets and motor not 
in line with capstan causing belt to skew, after correcting things 
it runs better with more torque and seems quieter.  Amazing on how 
these will "play" out of adjustment but play so much better when 
things are aligned properly.  One thing I did years ago was build 
a "line conditioner" a trip to our local electronic surplus store 
had everything I needed. This prevents voltage spikes or drops from 
ruining the electronics in the instrument by keeping voltage at a 
constant, and costs very little to build, basically a choke 
transformer and a bridging network. JK came up with a couple of 
quick fix improvements that should be a 'Must" for any unit. One is 
changing the current path to the power switch in order to fuse line 
current at switch, the other is replacing the wire from head block 
into preamp. The line wire on mine looked ok and rang out using an 
ohm meter, but when moving the cable while hooked to meter there was 
variance, not good. I used a good quality shield cable as the cheap 
stuff may not have shielding and pick up noise. When time permits 
will assemble notes and pictures in step by step format and make 
available. Will also add pics of finished unit later.  Anyhow this 
should hold up for another 30 years unless we are plagued by 
termites, or JK's chili!   Doug