While doing a bit of research on the Reggae label Trojan I came across a story on Brian's Mellotron told by Dennis 'Blackbeard' Bovell.
He said that by '73 Brian's Mellotron had ended up in the recording studio R.G. Jones in Wimbledon.
Here's an excerpt - from the book 'Bass Culture - When Reggae was King' by Lloyd Bradley[page 376-377] - of what Bovell said when asked about his dealings with Trojan in 1973:
'The studio we'd booked was R.G. Jones in Wimbledon, South London, and in it was a Mellotron
that had belonged to Brian Jones, the Rolling Stones guy. It was a huge great thing that
didn't take to transporting around so it was just left in the studio - Brian Jones was
dead by then - and at the end of the session, after we'd recorded all the stuff we'd
written for our demo, we had done some time left and we'd had a go on it.
Because of the string sounds on it, this was like the first synthesizer, I fancied fooling about with it,
and, not being able to afford an orchestra, we just had to try it.
We wanted to have a go at sending up all that cover version, stringsy reggae'
BTW the song in question was a cover of Hot Chocolate's 'Brother Louie' and was the first single released of UK based reggae group Matumbi.
As I know practically nothing about The Stones' instruments, I have no idea how much truth there is to this. I would be grateful if anyone could confirm or deny this story[I searched the archive, but couldn't find anything useful].
Link to His Majesty's great thread on the Mellotron: [
www.iorr.org]