Elmo GS1200 XENON Restoration Project. (Part 1)

[Desmond Godwin]

....

[Roy1]

I have an Elmo GS1200 which over the years has given sterling service, and in the old days was used to project a FilmClub's public shows. I last used it to project super 8 films in order to transfer the films to a PC. Unfortunately the amp seems to have packed up. does anyone know who can supply a replacement amp.

[Desmond Godwin]

Desmond

[Roy1]

Desmond. The problem with the amp started long after ext speakers were used with the Elmo. Anyway after forty years or more of connecting speakers to projectors I don't think I would have made a mistake. No the problem has occurred since the Elmo has been stored.
It started of by making crackling noises when projecting whilst the sound was still playing. When the Proj was switched on but idle the crackling could be heard when gently tapping the projector anywhere. It sounded like a bad connection or a dry joint. However, now there is no sound at all, it's dead. The Elmo is a standard lamp model. I have several Projectors and they all have something wrong with them. The Eumigs and the Bauers have gate or claw problems and the cost of repair is prohibitive.

[Brian Saberton]

Roy

You could try Bill Parsons, e mail: billparsons@bparsons97.freeserve.co.uk

Bill is a specialist in repairs to Elmo projectors and may be able to help.

[Desmond Godwin]

..........

[Roy1]

Brian. Thanks for Info.
Desmond. I assumed the Amp was dead because the crackling stopped and tapping the projector gave no response in the way of crackling. There is no sound whatsoever coming from the Amp. when projecting.

[tom hardwick]

I have the same crackling problem from my GS1200 speakers, but the line-out levels are clean so there's not really a problem. Years ago I bought a spare sound head but head wear hasn't been a problem so I've never had to replace them. Not like my Noris Electronic Studio 2000, which wore its stripe heads out in no time - and that was with the machine running the audio off cassette tapes for most of its life.

tom.

[Desmond Godwin]

I

[tom hardwick]

Yes, you describe my Noris perfectly. The cassette ran at normal (1 7/8 ips cassette) speed only if the projector was showing 18fps, and was consequently faster with 24fps films. No noise reduction of course, but even so the sound quality trumped stripe with ease.

The fast pull down along with the f/1.1 Schneider Xenovaron meant bright sharp pictures, and the rear pressure plate was the proper way to design the thing. And the machine was so quiet too - hard to see how they did that with such tiny shutter sector blades and the very fast pull-down.

tom.

[Desmond Godwin]

T

[tom hardwick]

I do indeed remember Francis Williams and read his words with glee. Although Noris machines tested out very well their real problem was their long term reliability. In the quest for quietness sprocket wheels were made of plastic and the teeth wore in no time. Having sound heads that wore out so fast would have been funny if the worn heads didn't end up chiselling off the sound stripe. I could not think what all this brown dust was covering my beautifully cleaned films, and with horror realised it was my own stripe.

The cassette deck's heads were likewise soft as butter and the drive belts gave up within the guarantee period. The fast pull-down was a sales-pitch until the engineering side of your head asks what the downsides are. There's far greater wear on the pull-down arm's cam (which is almost impossible to lubricate) and worse, there's more wear on the film's perforations. Many's the film I've had to run in reverse for transfer to digital because of perforation damage.

The Noris was a machine that was easy to sell, but you'd never sell another. No wonder Springet of Malden gave up. The GS1200 on the other hand is hewn from a solid block of hardened bullet-proof steel. Brace your back before you pick it up off the floor. The early models didn't like cement splices and would pop them open, but the mod to the lower loop cured that.

OK, the Elmo wasn't as quiet as the Noris, but now - thirty years later, do I care? No. The Elmo works every time I switch it on, it's four motors doing what Noris tried to do with one. And the porn shops of Soho bought nothing else because they wanted a machine that worked 24/7, though it wasn't called that back then.

I use the Schneider f/1.1 on the Elmo, discarding the less good Elmo f/1.0 and losing the focusing knob's connection. But the Elmo's 200w lamp didn't mess about with hot-spot centres like the Noris did, and the evenness corner to corner means I can do film transfers with this machine with the lamp on low power and no extra diffusion in the gate.

I wonder what Elmo are up to now?

tom.

[Desmond Godwin]

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