Sam James
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 114
From: London
Registered: Oct 2005
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posted May 21, 2006 08:34 AM
I too paid a brief but enjoyable visit to the BFCC on Saturday. Only my second, but thanks to this forum I am a little more savvy and was able to actually talk to people rather than stare, goggle eyed like a kid in a sweet shop as I had done in October last. One of the chaps I spoke to was Kev who, after an initial look of suspicion on being hailed by a complete stranger, (what do you expect if you've posted your pic on the forum!!) was very friendly and helpful.
I originally accosted him to thank him for helping me some time ago to discover whether or not my newly purchased Elmo (ST1200) was able to play both sound tracks, given that a copy of "The Jungle Book" advertised as "stereo" I'd also just bought was only playing through one speaker of my stereo. Kev kindly sent me a short film he knew to be in stereo and it became immediately clear that my projector was firing on all cylinders.
Anyway, on Saturday I mentioned that even a very slight increase in volume on the Elmo would result in a hefty amount of hum which I assumed meant the imminent death of the projector's amp. Far from it. Although, he said, you can never get rid of the hum entirely from said machine, you can do quite a bit about it.
Here's the tip:
Open up the front of the beast and once you've finished admiring the simple ingenuity of it all, investigate the sound head area. You may need a torch, but if you peer underneath you should find to small, yellow, plastic lumps on wires apparently tucked up in a random stylie. These are coils, one for each track, and their relative positions to each other and just about everything in the machine will make a big difference to the noise. As I understood it, their job is to suppress the amp noise, but don't quote me. Anyway, plug the projector in, turn the motor and lamp on and pump up the volume. Kev assured me that it's perfectly safe to fiddle around by the coils with everything going as there's "no voltage there" (again don't quote me!). Move the track selector switch (at the upper rear of the Elmo) to track 1 and then gently move the coils around within their tight space. You'll quickly discover which one is for which track. It's a bit fiddly and I used the non-business end of a match to do it, but blow me if it doesn't work. Repeat for track 2. You can seriously reduce the hum.
Sorry if you pros have heard this all before, but it's so neat I thought it should be shared.
Kev, thanks, ..............again.
Sam
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