Chamberlin

While most keyboard players (and plenty of other musicians, as well) remember the Mellotron, few realize that it’s actually based on an earlier keyboard instrument developed in 1960 in California called the Chamberlin. Named after its inventor, Harry Chamberlin, this keyboard was the first to use recordings of real acoustic instruments on tape to produce its sounds. The radical design actually used a separate tape recorder head and magnetic tape for each key to play back the recorded sounds. Technically speaking, the Chamberlin was the first “sample-based” keyboard, but it was simply ahead of its time and eventually it was the Mellotron that went on to fame backing bands as diverse as The Moody Blues, Yes, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and King Crimson.