I was briefly the owner of a c.1969 Mercian Olympic that Mike Melton rebuilt. Allegedly, he replaced the top and seat tubes, which had been damaged in a collision. What I was told by the bike's original owner is that Melton used Vitus 971 tubing; certainly the Nervex Pro top head lug and seat tube lugs did not match the lower head lug. It looked rough, but he may have done this as much to put a student with a small purse back on the road as anything else. The owner did the clean-up after the brazing. The paint was pretty bad.
The original owner said he thought Melton did the repair c.1972 or '73, and that Melton was associated with a guy named Azar (sp?) who ran a bike shop in Columbia's Five Points area during the bike boom.
Russ Fitzgerald
Greenwood, SC USA