Mellotron M400

The Mellotron M400 is a keyboard instrument that plays recordings of real instruments from tape loops -- pull a key and you hear a recorded flute, cello, or choir. Released in 1970, it became the defining textural instrument of progressive rock. The sweeping string and choir sounds that open The Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever, frame King Crimson's The Court of the Crimson King, and saturate Genesis's Watcher of the Skies all come from Mellotrons. Tony Banks of Genesis and Rick Wakeman of Yes both used the M400 extensively. Its unpredictability and tendency to go out of tune in humid conditions gave it a haunted, imperfect quality that no synthesizer has fully replicated.