Mello

I love Mello.

The lo-fi nostalgia that comes from the 'tron is well known and has been sampled many times for various VSTis, but here in UVI's Mello I think it sounds the best. There are fewer patches than its competitors have included, but what is here has that sonic mojo that the Mellotron is known for. I hope to see UVI expand on the available sounds in the future.

This thing has a juicy, grungy, living tone that can add character to your productions. For even more vibe, I ran it through a rotary simulator and it just oozed out of the speakers. I was fortunate to once see Nosferatu and Phantom Of The Opera accompanied by a cinematic organist. Mello nails that old dramatic sound perfectly.

In addition to the soundbank selectors, there is a nice sounding fx section with reverb and delay, controls for tone and pitch, volume controls for key noise and mechanical noise, a 3 band eq, a switch to give you the full range of notes on your controller (original 'trons only played a couple of octaves), a few switches I didn't delve into, and an "under the hood" panel that lets you mess with ADSR and filter settings. All of this gives you a lot more ways to manipulate your sound than an actual Mellotron would, so that's not only fun to play with, but could result in some useful sounds as well.

I can't recommend it more highly.