Review of Eumig's best dual gauge projector!

[Paul Adsett]

An 800's stereo machine could have easily been made by Eumig, the sound head is already 2- tracks, just some additional electronics required. I wonder why they never did it.

[Lee Mannering]

Nice read Shane. The 709 was the first sound Eumig I got to play with early 1970's thanks to a film magazine journalist who befriended this young boy. I had the notion I could synchronise my cassette recorder to it and once we achieved that he published it in a film magazine. I still have the S8 50ft film we dubbed, something I filmed off tv as you do with a Mike near the TV speaker.
709 was a work horse and at least the old valves were easy to switch. A couple of years later I got a 807D transistor machine which I still use from time to time.
Good Times and enjoy your 709

[Shane C. Collins]

Thank you John, and Lee for the nice comments, and your impressions of the 709! It's good to hear from others here who also endorse these early Eumig projectors. I was starting to think my buddy Joseph and I were the only ones who liked these early machines... I see that's not the case, and it makes me grin with a big ole smile...

[Graham Ritchie]

Today I was thinking that the Eumig Dual 8 projectors like the 810D, that's just one I can think of at the moment, have a speed of 18-24fps, now that's fine for sound Standard 8 or Super 8 films, even the basic Eumig silent model are all 18fps.

Now this is the sticking point for me, is that Standard 8 film is shot at 16fps, although a difference might only be 2fps faster on one of those projectors, its still not watching the film at the speed it was shot.
Just to get an idea what even a single increase of 1fps on my GS 1200 on Super8 film is like, I tried an increase of 1fps, well you can certainly hear the projector running a lot faster as an example, wont 2fps going to show up to fast on the screen?.

Back to Standard 8mm, my thinking is, if you have old home movies shot at 16fps it would be better to get, say a Bolex M8, or even a Eumig P8, the bottom line being, a projector with a variable speed control, and not one fixed at 18fps for Standard 8mm silent film home movies.

Anyway that's my thoughts for today, I think they should have made those Eumig dual projectors to do 16-18-24

[Joseph Banfield]

Something that is often not mentioned about the early vacuum tube projectors is the wonderful design of the amplifier itself. Only the finest components were used in the design and most of these amps are still working to this day. The amplifier itself uses only three vacuum tubes, two of which are dual tubes (two tubes within the same envelope). So it actually contains 5 tubes for the amplification and oscillator bias needed for making recordings. Eumig managed to squeeze all these components onto a small metal chasis that can be easily removed as a complete unit without unsoldering a single wire! All of the vacuum tubes are 9-pin miniatures and are highly reliable and rated well into thousands of hours of operating life. In other words, the vacuum tubes will last far longer than the mechanical parts in actual practice! A very nice detail about this design is the complete elimination of a rectifier tube in the power supply. Eumig took care of this by using a solid state full wave rectifier. The importance of this is that it significantly increases reliability because rectifier tubes produce a lot of heat and they often fail prematurely. And the amplifier itself does not need hum bucking coils to reduce hum in the audio because it simply does not produce hum in the first place! Another nice feature with vacuum tube amps is that they are not finicky with speakers of different ohms, unlike transistorized models where the power transistor is easily blown out if speakers are not matched properly. And unlike transistorized models the vacuum tube amps permit running both the internal speaker of the projector and an external one at the same time...nice touch if you have the projector in an enclosed booth!

[Brian Fretwell]

Today I was thinking that the Eumig Dual 8 projectors like the 810D, that's just one I can think of at the moment, have a speed of 18-24fps, now that's fine for sound Standard 8 or Super 8 films, even the basic Eumig silent model are all 18fps.

Now this is the sticking point for me, is that Standard 8 film is shot at 16fps, although a difference might only be 2fps faster on one of those projectors, its still not watching the film at the speed it was shot.
Just to get an idea what even a single increase of 1fps on my GS 1200 on Super8 film is like, I tried an increase of 1fps, well you can certainly hear the projector running a lot faster as an example, wont 2fps going to show up to fast on the screen?.

Back to Standard 8mm, my thinking is, if you have old home movies shot at 16fps it would be better to get, say a Bolex M8, or even a Eumig P8, the bottom line being, a projector with a variable speed control, and not one fixed at 18fps for Standard 8mm silent film home movies.

Anyway that's my thoughts for today, I think they should have made those Eumig dual projectors to do 16-18-24

Well if you are in a country with 50Hz electricity you can always switch the Eumig 810D to 6Hz and use the constantly adjustable speed to get 16fps.

[Shane C. Collins]

Something that is often not mentioned about the early vacuum tube projectors is the wonderful design of the amplifier itself. Only the finest components were used in the design and most of these amps are still working to this day. The amplifier itself uses only three vacuum tubes, two of which are dual tubes (two tubes within the same envelope). So it actually contains 5 tubes for the amplification and oscillator bias needed for making recordings. Eumig managed to squeeze all these components onto a small metal chasis that can be easily removed as a complete unit without unsoldering a single wire! All of the vacuum tubes are 9-pin miniatures and are highly reliable and rated well into thousands of hours of operating life. In other words, the vacuum tubes will last far longer than the mechanical parts in actual practice! A very nice detail about this design is the complete elimination of a rectifier tube in the power supply. Eumig took care of this by using a solid state full wave rectifier. The importance of this is that it significantly increases reliability because rectifier tubes produce a lot of heat and they often fail prematurely. And the amplifier itself does not need hum bucking coils to reduce hum in the audio because it simply does not produce hum in the first place! Another nice feature with vacuum tube amps is that they are not finicky with speakers of different ohms, unlike transistorized models where the power transistor is easily blown out if speakers are not matched properly. And unlike transistorized models the vacuum tube amps permit running both the internal speaker of the projector and an external one at the same time...nice touch if you have the projector in an enclosed booth!

Thank you Joseph for chiming in about these marvelous tube amps! This is a wonderful write-up! ....

[Joseph Banfield]

I couldn't resist doing a write up on such a cleverly designed amplifier. It's really ingeniously crafted by Eumig!

[Graham Ritchie]

Thanks for that Brian, I will have to have a closer look, how accurate is the lower speed to 16fps?

The below photo of the back removed was taken a while ago, I will have a look for item "C" today

[Brian Fretwell]

From simple calculations the lowest speed should be 15 fps so the variable speed control would have to be slightly above that.

I have no idea what plug C would be and I think just moving the level D would do it as that (if I remember correctly) just alters the stopping points of the sped control.

[David Hardy]

I have said it before i think but i will say it again regarding those early sound EUMIGS . As a now long retired Cinema Projectionist I for one 100% agree with the opinions of Shane and Joseph . I too also prefer the sound and design of those tube / valve amplifiers and the ease of threading of those wonderful machines . I often wonder if it would be possible to upgrade the light source without causing to much heat problems . Has anyone in this group done this to these older machines ?

[Shane C. Collins]

I have said it before i think but i will say it again regarding those early sound EUMIGS . As a now long retired Cinema Projectionist I for one 100% agree with the opinions of Shane and Joseph . I too also prefer the sound and design of those tube / valve amplifiers and the ease of threading of those wonderful machines . I often wonder if it would be possible to upgrade the light source without causing to much heat problems . Has anyone in this group done this to these older machines ?

Thanks David for chiming in! It's nice to add another person here who admires the early Eumigs. I have found the light source to be quite good on these early machines. Those FCR bulbs are cheap too! I'm using a Eumig 1.0 zoom which really helps with brightness. On a standard 3 by 3 foot projection screen my images are nice and bright!

[David Hardy]

Shane yes those lamps do indeed produce enough light output for that screen size . In all my years of film collecting i have never been able to track down and buy that Eumig 1.0 zoom lens . Never mind i might yet strike lucky even on ebay . Cheers !

[Shane C. Collins]

Shane yes those lamps do indeed produce enough light output for that screen size . In all my years of film collecting i have never been able to track down and buy that Eumig 1.0 zoom lens . Never mind i might yet strike lucky even on ebay . Cheers !

The Eumig 1.0 is a fantastic lens! The sharpest zoom lens I've ever used. I believe Eumig spared no expense when they designed, and manufactured this hunk of metal. I've always enjoyed using Bolex prime lenses, but this zoom lens comes very close to having the same sharpness, and contrast. It's also a very heavy lens, no plastic in this design! Many have said this lens is hard to focus, but I have not found that to be the case. Certainly the twist-to-focus design helps in this regard. When I was searching for this lens, I came across one being sold overseas. I jumped on it without hesitation. Below are photos of my lens. Highly recommended, and yes very scarce.

[David Hardy]

Shane thanks for that reply and sharing those photos . Maybe in 2023 i might just strike lucky and finally own one . Cheers !