Anyone here collect vintage movie projectors/films?

[holmesuser01]

Hi George.

It's not an old theatre. It's a multiplex built in 1983-84. All the 35mm stuff was Christie. It has all run with very few issues every day since the place opened.

We have moved up (their words, not mine) to Sony digital projectors in most of the theatres. You can almost look at them and they will shut down.

At one time, I had 3500 films in 16mm. I cleaned out several TV stations back in the 1980's when they were unloading their libraries and switching to tape. When vinegar syndrome reared its ugly head, I lost several complete TV sitcom series to the rot, and so I sold most of the collection between 1999 and 2003, and as of now, I own about 50 features, 150 TV shows, and about 400 cartoons. Much of the film I have now is polyestar stock. Easy to scratch, but no VS worries.

No Jetsons episodes anymore.

[bgadow]

I'm in the process of selling a pair of extra 16mm projectors so I dug them out and pulled out some films for testing. I was dissapointed to find that one of them was getting the VS. I really need to use them more; there are a few early home movies that I really should duplicate-highway scenes from the late 30s or so, etc.

[GeorgeJetson]

Originally Posted by holmesuser01

Hi George.

It's not an old theatre. It's a multiplex built in 1983-84. All the 35mm stuff was Christie. It has all run with very few issues every day since the place opened.

We have moved up (their words, not mine) to Sony digital projectors in most of the theatres. You can almost look at them and they will shut down.

At one time, I had 3500 films in 16mm. I cleaned out several TV stations back in the 1980's when they were unloading their libraries and switching to tape. When vinegar syndrome reared its ugly head, I lost several complete TV sitcom series to the rot, and so I sold most of the collection between 1999 and 2003, and as of now, I own about 50 features, 150 TV shows, and about 400 cartoons. Much of the film I have now is polyestar stock. Easy to scratch, but no VS worries.

No Jetsons episodes anymore.

That's the bad thing about film..it degrades.
Sometimes film is the only way to see vintage programs intact and complete though,for instance all of the original Capitol production music heard in "my three sons" and the original Gumby shows has been replaced with crappy synthesizer music because both studios were too cheap to pay royalties to use the original music on the DVD releases.

Even newer shows like "quantum leap" have fallen victim to this practice and had their original scores replaced with elevator music rather than pay royalties for music such a "Georgia on my mind" by Ray Charles,Ooby Dooby by Roy Oribison,etc.

I believe "the wonder years" would likely suffer the same fate on DVD as it used original music from the '60's.

[holmesuser01]

I have tape copies of the Capitol "needle-drop" recordings from one of the stations I cleaned out. I won't use them for anything, as I like to just listen to them.

I havent seen any of the My Three Sons shows on DVD, but if the original music was not there, I'd be nothing but pissed. I used to have a bunch of the B/W shows, and a handful of color shows that were original soundtracks.

Much of the same music was used by Hanna-Barbera on Yogi Bear, and Huckleberry Hound, among others. "The Donna Reed Show" theme was a needle drop, and could be heard in the background on early Yogi cartoons.

[holmesuser01]

[QUOTE=GeorgeJetson;3003093]That's the bad thing about film..it degrades.


Funny you mention this. I have prints that have been run at least once a year since they were new... Some of these films are nearly 60 years old, with no sign of vinegar syndrome, or brittleness.

Many of the prints I lost were old library prints that were run (usually) 10 times or so, then discarded.

I think that vinegar often happens to films that have been sitting in cans for years and years. Acetate film needs to breathe! Most of the film I have today is at least rewound once a year.

[GeorgeJetson]

Originally Posted by holmesuser01

I have tape copies of the Capitol "needle-drop" recordings from one of the stations I cleaned out. I won't use them for anything, as I like to just listen to them.

I havent seen any of the My Three Sons shows on DVD, but if the original music was not there, I'd be nothing but pissed. I used to have a bunch of the B/W shows, and a handful of color shows that were original soundtracks.

Much of the same music was used by Hanna-Barbera on Yogi Bear, and Huckleberry Hound, among others. "The Donna Reed Show" theme was a needle drop, and could be heard in the background on early Yogi cartoons.

Wow!,are they reel to reel?
I have some of the Hi-Q lp's,but they don't come up for sale often.
I love that music and have some on old tapes,but the sound quality isn't that good.

Yep,the Donna Reed theme was indeed a Capitol library track "happy day" and was later so identified with the Donna Reed show they removed it from their library!

All of the production music library's had great stuff,I know that Davey and Goliath even used some Roger Roger cues which really surprised me as most of the other stuff was of the seeley-loose variety.

In my opinion some of those library music cues are the best music made..like Benny Carters "be cool",Laurie Johnson did a lot of library music work too before he worked on "The Avengers".

What's funny is that some of the production music library's even licensed their music for background purposes,there are some old Kresges (later renamed Kmart) records that used library tunes such as "Bright Spark" and "fashioned for tomorrow"

There a still many catchy tunes stuck in my mind that I have never found yet.

[jbivy]

I did have some 16mm german yogi bear reels that were "lost" when i moved, along with a lot of other stuff like cartoon film cels. Im 99% sure they were taken by the movers.

Boxes just dont open themselves up. But oh well, its not like I had a projector for it anyhow. I just have an affinitty for cartoon items. Though id have loved to see Yogi speak in german.

[vinljnkie]

I just bought a brand new 16mm projector built in 1984 from Ebay. It's a Telex Government surplus mil-spec projector. According to the auction the U. S. Govt. bought them in 1984 and they have sat in a warehouse since then. Here's a link to the auction page. http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-TELEX-16mm-S...item3a646fca4b It's a great projector and even runs my tired old school films that have been through the wars and have sprocket damage and splices. I did have a problem with the first projector they sent me. Something was causing the supply reel to advance faster than the projector could project it. Called the seller, they are a big professional camera/projector dealer in miami, and they were very apologetic. They emailed me a prepaid UPS label to send it back to them for repair. They had it about a week and then contacted me and said they would replace it with another one. This one has been running great. They even made a custom adapter so my anamorphic lens could be used with this projector. If anybody has a tired old projector I highly recommend this seller and this proj. I just couldn't see spending $300-400 on my nearly 50 year old B&H 500 series to have it overhauled and worm gear replaced when this one was 250.

[holmesuser01]

That Telex looks almost like a Graflex from around 1968. I've got several.

[leadlike]

Yup, that projector was sold under several brand names-including Singer/Graflex. Pretty solid projector. It is so sad that all those old B&Hs have bad worm gears now. I had about a half dozen of those at one point, and all of them self destructed.

[bgadow]

I sold the Singer/Graflex I had, just in the last month. I was surprised it didn't bring more on ebay ($45). It was a very smooth running machine. I have a pair of B+H 16mm sound projectors (one from the 50s and the other from the 70s) and hopefully they will both hold up. What are those gears made of, metal or plastic?

[vinljnkie]

The worm gears are made of plastic and as they age the gears crack. The new replacement gears are made from different plastic and will not crack. From what I have read on replaceing them it isn't a do it yourself project. It's about a 6 hour repair for someone that knows what they are doing. Also without the factory jigs to hold the parts in place the chance of the timing being anywhere near correct is slim. It's a very expensive repair for machines that are now 30-50 years old.

[cchaven]

I have a very solid 3M/Revere 16mm projector..though sound no longer works on it, even with a new tube. I also have a couple of Bolex 16mm cameras with a few odd rolls of film in my freezer along with my still film. As for film reels, I don't have very many, just stuff I've picked up here and there but a couple of the more interesting ones I have have is one episode of the "Schlitz Playhouse" from 1959 with commercials, as well as a couple of newsreel type reels...one that looks like it's from the early 30's of the USS Lexington conducting flight operations with biplanes..and another of the NS Savannah underway. All three of these are black/white..and unfortunately the reel of the Lexington has a bit of sprocket damage to it.

Jeff

[benman94]

I have an enormous collection of 16mm film. Tons of old Saturday morning cartoons acquired from a local TV station. A few episodes of "I Love Lucy" and the crown jewel to my collection: very rare Ub Iwerks cartoons. (Some of them actual Comi-Color produced prints!)

[HiFiCanada]

I got a old B&H 8mm movie projector and camera.