RESTORATION DATE (March 29th, 2011)

Trying to piece together this Reyes Soundhead from odd bits and pieces is not an easy process. As you can see, not all pieces come from the same sources, and hence, not all fit the way they should.

Funny detail about the assembly: the soundhead door has a nook tailor cut for the pipe that carries the solar cell wires, in the upper right corner of the glass window.

Conclusions: the pipe is in the right place, but of the incorrect length. There has to be more than one size of it, despite what the experts say.

That hand belongs to the person who stole that plate from a working booth (in the background). He knew that I was after one, and, without much consideration for his personal well being, he "got" me one. My debt of gratitude to this fellon and friend! ;)

RESTORATION (DATE March 27th, 2011)

What´s new? Trap/Gate assembly are finished and in place. So are top and bottom pad rollers. The José Reyes Soundhead is coming along nicely too. As you can see it is completely bare of paint. The idea is to get it finished and working, then I´ll dissasemble it again and send it to be painted in the same shop that did the projector. Oh, and, just for fun, I slapped a DTS timecode reader on top of it.

 

RESTORATION (DATE 11-NOV-2010)

890 days have elapsed since my last post here. This labours of love are usually like this. That is the reason why they usually take 10 years to complete. My passions have taken me back to work on this restoration and here I deliver some pictures of my recent progress.

RESTORATION (Date 4-JUN-08)

I´ve been trying to devote every spare second to this restoration, because next Monday, June 16th, I´m leaving town again to go on another instalation. This time an 8plex.

Here are some pictures of the progress I have been making with the Reyes Soundhead.

RESTORATION (18-MAY-08)

This past month has not been very active on this restoration, unfortunately. I was busy working on another area of my life. Finally, my E-III and me have a new home.

RESTORATION (Date 22-Mar-08)

This past Saturday was a very exciting day for this restoration effort. In between Easter Eggs, I went to downtown Buenos Aires to pick up a Lamphouse and a Pedestal. Another benefactor of this process, LFC, located this two machines for me and negotiated a decent price.

We got together in what was once the heart of the entertainment district, where we met a local tech, who is sitting on a gold mine in the shape of obsolete film exhibition equipment. Totally neglected, but with the power to shine again.

The pedestal ended up being a heavy and obtuse chunk of metal that didn´t appeal to me. Instead, I ended up exchanging it for a soundhead, which appeared to be an RCA, but ended up being a autoctonous José Reyes Soundhead.

The soudhead came together with a Westinghouse syncronous motor together with a drive train to transmit motion to the soundhead sprocket, to the projector and to the lower reel.




The Lamphouse I ended up buying is a Cinemeccanica Zenith 420. It was manufactured for carbon arc, was later adapted for a Xenon bulb and, after years of neglect, was ravaged for spares and any copper that could be sold off for a quick buck.