If you're unfamiliar with Chamberlin® musical instruments, please take the time to read about them in the Original Instrument section and check out the video showing our Chamberlin instruments. Because if you thought that tape playing instruments started and ended with the Mellotron®, you'll probably be blown away to discover that the entire tape playing instrument genre was invented by a Wisconsin based inventor, Harry Chamberlin, back in the 1950s.


Artists who've used Chamberlin instruments over the years range from Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, David Bowie, Marvin Gaye, Mitchell Froom, Three Dog Night, Todd Rundgren, Gino Vanelli, Edgar Winter, The Moody Blues, Elton John, The Beach Boys, XTC, Patrick Warren, Tom Waits, Kanye West, Jon Brion and countless more.

However, the sad truth is that we'll probably never know all the recordings the Chamberlin appeared on because the American Federation of Musicians kicked up a huge fuss back in the day and even banned the four manual M4 completely.

Aside from the 3 Violins sound, (originally called 'Violins' on the Chamberlin) which appears on both the Mellotron and Chamberlin library, all other sounds are unique to each manufacturer and while arguments continue to this day as to 'which is best?' we'll ignore such a fundamentally stupid question and state that Chamberlin recordings are widely acknowledged to have a more natural and uncompressed quality about them.

Chamberlin sounds also contain more natural vibrato and with the Chamberlin M series keyboards, the tapeheads had a greater bandwidth than the M400 equivalent which gave it a more 'hi-fi' edge.

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