35mm newbie, picked up a Simplex projector yesterday

[Ethan OToole]

35mm newbie here in the Mid-Atlantic.

Picked up a rescued Simplex projector yesterday. Found it on facebook marketplace. Haven't looked at it too in-depth yet. I can say, it's really heavy! No lamp house or any of that.

Pics of it: https://imgur.com/a/9PKvPqs

It has the Dolby Cat700 reader on it with some light rust. I noticed that the screws on the back were all missing but 1, which makes me nervous. Cable was cut. Found the diagrams for DB25 to 12 pin molex for this so will eventually make a new cable. I see it's supposed to be some fancy Belden Datalene 8164 cable but I might just do 4 separate shielded 2 conductor cables and keep it fairly short. Will check caps on the SMPS in the Dolby box. Some light wire wheel and oil to clean up the oxidation maybe?

The projector has the scope lens which doesn't look bad, missing the front side flat lens. Has the auto changeover mechanism but might be missing a PCB that drove that. Not too concerned there.

There is oxidation in some of the are where the film travels through. Light polishing with a dremel and compound and light oil or something to try to stop it from oxidation again?

I have a Dolby CP650 inbound that a friend scored for me off of Yahoo auctions Japan. Confirmed it has the board in it for the digital film sound head. The optical sound stuff fascinates me, will probably try to do SDDS in the future as well just because.

I will definitely look at the manual for it and try to get an idea on the oil. I haven't seen any leak out or anything but it might already have.

The back cap of the drive motor is dented in so I need to correct that so it can spin freely. I have not tried to spin anything or power it. Will need to check through it more first, and make some kind of mount cart with it on wheels.

In the short term I will probably try to use a 5K lumen LCD projector with the 3 LCDs removed for testing until I come around to a smaller lamphouse and SMPS. Same goes for a platter rig, will just use short worn trailers at first until I find a platter rig.

It's pretty exciting!

Any special gotchas I should know about?

[David Ferguson]

Welcome to the club!

I don't know anything about Simplexes, but I can say that my Dolby Cat 700 had a dusting of rust too, and it still worked fine (at least, until DHL lost it in the post...). Optical sound - especially digital - fascinates me too. I have Dolby Digital and DTS, but not SDDS because I've heard that can be a real pain, and seems to be the rarest of tracks to find on prints. One gotcha with Dolby Digital is to never ever plug the cable for the cat 700 (or any reader) into the processor whilst the processor is powered on, as that's a quick way to kill the sensor in it. Always have the processor powered off when plugging the cable in!

I used a UHP bulb from a data projector for my light source for about a year, before upgrading last month to xenon. The UHP gave the proper colour temperature, but the alignment was laughably out of whack. Not something I'd actually want to watch a film with. It was brilliant for testing and getting the projector working, though.

[Ethan OToole]

Awesome! Thanks for the heads up on the Dolby reader power. Interesting that the CCD is powered from the processor and not the SMPS on the unit, it looks like the SMPS is just for the bulb. I poked at the Dolby reader last night and it looks like someone had yoinked the cable going into it pretty hard and pulled the molex connector off the header, so I will repair that -- it should be no issue.

Nice regarding the UHP. Xenon is where I will try to go eventually.

I'm looking at constructing a cart this weekend out of 2x4 to mount the projector to so I can get it upright.

My CP650 seems to be lost in the USPS system.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

The rest of what you need is going to be harder to find. You need a base and lamp house like a Super Lumex. They are out there, but many of those are still in use, or have already fallen into collectors hands. Try to avoid a console as they are almost always 3-Phase and extremely heavy...

[Ethan OToole]

I was planning to build a base out of 2x4 and put casters on it...

Console is when the lamphouse is in a large cabinet along with the ballast transformer and stuff? This was on such a thing but the prior owner removed it from that and threw the large cabinet away.

I saw those smaller lamp houses on eBay along with the switchmode ballast/driver/power supply units. Those seem ideal for a compact setup even though the ballasts aren't as reliable as the big transformers.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I was planning to build a base out of 2x4 and put casters on it...

Console is when the lamphouse is in a large cabinet along with the ballast transformer and stuff? This was on such a thing but the prior owner removed it from that and threw the large cabinet away.

I saw those smaller lamp houses on eBay along with the switchmode ballast/driver/power supply units. Those seem ideal for a compact setup even though the ballasts aren't as reliable as the big transformers.

Yes, depending on the era of the console it would have had a boat anchor rectifier, or if it were later then it wold have an electronic switching rectifier. The projector also mounts on it via a foot type mount. Even empty, a console is extremely heavy. I guess you could do a 2X4 base... but locating a base is a much better option because it will have a lamphouse table that adjusts to properly align the lamp. And that is a touchy thing with xenon lamps.

[Vern Dias]

This was taken years ago. I went the 2x4 route, but used an incandescent lamp with condenser lenses from a Kodak Carousel slide projector.