8mm Forum: Is Bolex SP-80 good?

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Posted by Akshay Nanjangud (Member # 2828) on December 04, 2011, 06:41 PM:

Hi,

I am looking for a sound projector for 8mm/Super 8 formats. Is the Bolex SP-80 a good projector?

It's confusing that super8wiki.com and super8data.com list this projector as a dual 8mm and super 8 projector, respectively. It looks like a Super 8 projector to me. Can someone confirm?

I have the opportunity to buy it from a seller in person. What should I look for when I go to see it?

Thanks in advance :-)

Posted by Barry Fritz (Member # 1865) on December 04, 2011, 06:57 PM:

It is a great sound projector. It was actually made by Eumig and is the same as an Eumig model but I can't think of the model number. It will play Single 8mm and Super 8mm film, but not Regular 8mm. That is where the confusion comes about. Google these formats if you are not aware of the difference.

Posted by Akshay Nanjangud (Member # 2828) on December 04, 2011, 07:17 PM:

Barry, super8wiki claims this projector "borrows heavily" from the Eumig 700 series. Also, thanks for the clarification of the film formats; I did not know the difference.

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on December 04, 2011, 10:29 PM:

I have one of these: it was my first sound machine and has been very reliable. Beneath the skin it is pure Eumig.

It is more compact than Elmos of similar specs, but this comes with the handicap of a gate and sound head that's harder to clean and the inability to remove a film from the machine mid reel.

The internal amp is meant to drive a 4 ohm speaker. The typical speaker you already have is 8 ohms which means you can only get to half power unless you put two in parallel. Many of these machines come in an optional carrying case that has a 4 ohm external speaker mounted inside it and a cable to run over to the machine. It's not exactly Dolby Stereo, but it's useful especially away from home. (Don't connect this 4 ohm speaker to other audio equipment or you may wind up blowing up an amp meant for 8 ohms.)

The variable speed control is very clever and very simple. Unfortunately it has a rubber facing on the drive disk which is nasty to replace if it wears out and this probably has been fatal to many of these machines. If the seller will let you, set it for 24 FPS, load a sound film (one you'd happily sacrifice...) and make sure it will reliably get to full speed. If the seller won't, consider walking away...

They tend to be hummy, especially when connected to an external sound system through the line level aux. output. From what I've seen the internal grounding of the machine is not very good and I doubt I'll get mine to play well though my setup until I fix this.

Posted by Akshay Nanjangud (Member # 2828) on December 04, 2011, 11:56 PM:

Hi Steve,

When you mention the sound capabilities of this projector a question comes to my mind. Can I safely use the Bolex SP-80 to play silent films? If I am right, some sound projectors retract the magnetic reader to prevent wear. Am I correct? If the Bolex doesn't, is it still a good buy?

Thanks, again, in advance. :-)

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on December 05, 2011, 05:44 AM:

All Super-8 sound machines can play silent films.

If I had it to do again, I'd still buy my Bolex. It has served me very well nine years now. I had this month about two years ago when I had problems with both of my other machines and it was the only one still working.

Posted by Maurizio Di Cintio (Member # 144) on December 05, 2011, 10:13 AM:

Indeed not all projectors have a "silent mode" projection capability, i.e. it not said the heads don't get in touch with the mag stripe. Eumigs of 800 series are among these (and clones), in fact their sound heads get in touch with film even if it has no stripe; there i sno way to avoid this, unless you fiddle in the inner workings. Also some Bauers have such a limitation...

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on December 05, 2011, 11:43 AM:

I'm not so sure this is really a worthwhile feature in most cases:

Yes, the heads are in contact with the silent film and causing film wear, but then again the place the wear is occuring does pretty much nothing on a silent film so it shouldn't matter.

Yes, the heads are being worn by contact with the film, but then again film base is a lot less abrasive than sound stripe so this isn't going to make much difference in head life.

As the bonus you have all the extra mechanisms needed to deploy and retract the heads. This makes for complexity, and that's not great for reliability. Albert Einstein once said: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.”, and he was a pretty smart guy!

However, I could see this being a good idea on machines equipped to show optical sound films. I would imagine the optical tracks would work better and longer without a magnetic head scraping across them every time the film is shown.

Posted by Barry Fritz (Member # 1865) on December 05, 2011, 01:21 PM:

Steve: If you have the SP-80 manual it would be great if you could upload it to Brad Miller. I'd appreciate it and Ashkay would also, I'm sure. It's a hard one to find for some reason.

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on December 05, 2011, 01:41 PM:

I do have the manual and want to send it in, however if you go in the manuals section and check out the Eumig 810D manual that is there now, it's basically the same animal. From what I can tell the biggest difference is the lack of dual gauge capacity and the shape and color of cover over the projection path.

I have a copy of Lenny Lipton's "The Super-8 Book". In the chapter covering projectors he describes the Eumig 810D and Bolex SP-80 as being fundamentally the same thing. He recommended that people who didn't need to show R8 films buy the "Bolex" because it was slightly cheaper.

Posted by Barry Fritz (Member # 1865) on December 05, 2011, 01:56 PM:

Steve: Just came from the manual section and viewed the 810 manual and when I got here I see your post. You are correct from what I can tell the 810 manual will be just fine as a guide.

Posted by Akshay Nanjangud (Member # 2828) on December 05, 2011, 01:59 PM:

Thanks everyone. All replies posted have been most beneficial.

My best regards to everyone.

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on December 05, 2011, 02:16 PM:

Excellent!

The shame of it all is if you go onto Mr. Lipton's website he doesn't even claim credit for writing "The Super-8 Book". You wouldn't think a guy who is best known for writing "Puff the Magic Dragon" would worry that much about having roots in the past!

Posted by Maurizio Di Cintio (Member # 144) on December 05, 2011, 03:30 PM:

Steve, you might happen to have a still not recorded mag stripe and I guess you don't want to have unnecessary wear on sound heads every time you screen a film which is still to be completed. Especially these days when replacements are getting scarcer and scarcer. My tuppence...

Plus, when in silent node, usually the sound pressure pads are retracted, not the head and it's a quite simple leverage arrangement on most models...

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on December 05, 2011, 03:51 PM:

What machines was this feature available on?

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on December 05, 2011, 06:42 PM:

All the Eumig 900 series retract the sound head pressure pads when running in the silent mode position of the control knob.

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on December 06, 2011, 08:16 AM:

I'm going to break the "silent mode" discussion onto a new thread.

Posted by Ken Finch (Member # 2768) on December 15, 2011, 03:46 PM:

Hello Akshay. I thought I should add a few comments about the Bolex projector and hope it may be of help to you. I bought a Bolex SP8E model from the late Warton Parfitt about 8 years ago and have had little trouble. I also had a Eumig Mark S 810D HQS given to me. this is the dual 8 model. I can confirm that mechanicaly they are more or less the same. The minor problems I have had are with the drive slipping on the rubber driving disc. The ball shaped end of the motor spindle tends to wear the diving disc smooth. I cured this by very lightly rubbing the pad with 000 grade emery paper and also the contact area of the motor spindle so that it has a better grip. The only other problem has been loss of some of the split plastic rollers in the "Chute" arrangement at the rear of the machines where the film exits to the take up spool. These were missing when I purchased the machine so I have removed the chute until I can manage to obtain some to avoid films becoming scratched. I think the only purpose was to feed the film into the take up spool semi automatically. Oh how I hate "automatic threading"

Posted by Akshay Nanjangud (Member # 2828) on December 15, 2011, 05:29 PM:

Ken, perhaps am still a novice and so didn't understand one bit of what you were saying about the wear of a drive disk. Where is this disk? Do I need to open the back to see it? If you could describe a little more, I will look into what's going on with my Bolex.

I wasn't aware of the importance of those three rollers until I got the projector home and read of them in this forum. Fortunately, my projector still has these rollers.

I had problems with threading of this projector when I got it. Many hours of general cleaning, etc. and it's not been a problem. Again replies on this thread were helpful.

Honestly, I love this projector. I got it for $45 with only the projector and power cord, no other accessories or wires or microphone, but I still love it.

Posted by Jorma Julku (Member # 6015) on January 12, 2018, 03:14 PM:

Hi!
I bought Bolex sm-80 programmatic. Technical informations say it has a 240 meter capacity. Rear arm reel extends from 120 meter to 180 meter when pressing red button.
Is there also another magic trick that makes it even longer?
I found this projector quite good.
This Forum is really treasure for people like me to find out new information about super 8mm. Thank you!
Jorma

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on January 12, 2018, 03:25 PM:

It might manage 240m with thin polyester based film, perhaps that's what they meant to make it sound better than it was.

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on January 12, 2018, 03:42 PM:

I think this 240M reel capacity came from the various film databases out there and not the Bolex/Eumig manuals. There is a lot of really useful information in these, but they aren't perfect.

This machine is a lot like my own "Bolex", and mine is 600Ft.(180M) maximum.

Mine is kind of a backup machine, mostly because of the limited reel size. Sometimes I wish it wasn't as good as it is: there isn't as much motivation to fix the machine it's subbing for and they tend to just sit! (-been on active duty for months now!)

Posted by Graham Ritchie (Member # 559) on January 12, 2018, 04:55 PM:

I bought 800ft Bolex reels years ago for the SM8. The Bolex reel are 250m/830ft and have a diameter of 250mm, so that's 125mm from the centre out to the reels edge so they will fit your projector no problem.

Another 800ft reel with the same total 250mm dia, are the Carl Schneider.

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