Super Rural 1

BB1 BB2 SR 2 SR 3 Home Talkie  Rural Sonore

SUPER RURAL 1

This is about my acquisition of a Pathé Super Talkie, the presumed UK version ofthe French Super Rural. I had never seen one, and the only report of any in the UK was that Larry Pearce had had a couple thru his hands many years ago. I had seen one Rex silent machine (called the Rural in France) held by the Science Museum, and  two sound Rurals, (they are the Rural Sonore, see left, not the Super Rural) in Ron Grant's Cinema Museum in London. These, both  converted to 16mm, have now taken up residence in Cinerdistan.

For the avoidance of doubt, here are some ads and also pix of my first Super, which is undoubtedly a Super Rural, not a Super Talkie. The blue background was originally red like the front view; I was too lazy to photoshop that one.

I got the Super Talkie/Rural from another collector along with a whole load of films, and by the look of it, it's had a chequered past. The previous owner had identified an issue I have yet to bottom satisfactorily. He was convinced that there was a difference between the French sound/picture separation and the English.  If so, it has the apparent French sound separation of about 19 frames, as measured on the Super Rural, whereas the British separation, as measured on the Home Talkie, is 26 frames. (One wonders if there ever were in fact any British Super Talkies and, if there were, how they made the sound separation longer. If indeed it is).

This is all a bit hard to swallow. I had a brief email exchange with a French guy who has a Super Rural, and he was adamant there was no difference. On the other hand, some 17.5 leaders have 19 frames sound separation printed on them. Also, 19 frames is the sound/picture separation for 35mm, and one can readily see that Pathé could simply have copied this. I have measured carefully, and there is no way you can get 26 frames into the loop between gate and sound reader on the Super Rural. Equally, there is no way the loop on the Home Talkie, which goes under and round the lamphouse, can be shrunk to 19 frames. But the French Natan 175 is more or less identical to the Home Talkie, so Im not clear how that could have a 19 frame separation. It was only much later that I found any statement of a 17.5 film standard (which failed to deal with the sound/picture separation), although this exists in one form or another for all the other gauges. Once I get the Super Rural going (a long-delayed project), I shall finally be able to check, as I do have some French footage.

Anyway, the point of all this is that my predecessor had extensively modified the Super Rural (SR for short from here on) in an attempt to provide a longer loop and restore the alleged lost sound synchronisation. This involved removing the middle of the three sprockets on the machine and inserting some rollers before the sound reader. The film was then pulled thru the sound head by the third sprocket. He also made a number of other changes, to retention rollers on the remaining sprockets and a complete replacement of the exciter lamp assembly. The amplifier was gutted and replaced by an Elf amp. The removal of the middle sprocket produced problems. The drive to the middle sprocket is very direct, a gear off the main shaft. The drive to the third sprocket is less direct, and is part of the drive train that operates the take-up, which is powered by a long shaft running down inside the back of the spool arm. This latter is rather bent and dodgy; hardly the sort of thing you want feeding back into your sound reproduction - wow is inevitable.

As you know, progress in electronics has been exponential over the last few years, and by the time I got round to starting work on the SR, the possibility of doing the job electronically rather than physically had emerged. It appears that there is an increasing problem of synchronisation in TV/Home Cinema/Hi-Fi circles because of satellites. I have noticed a significant lag between terrestrial TV and the satellite signal. I have identified the necessary technology to sort out the SR, tho it seems too expensive yet. Anyway, the real possibility of an electronic solution made me decide to do what I could to restore the machine to its original state.

As something of an aside, the Super Rural continued after the war as the  (16mm)Type 45, but with a separate amplifier and without the switch block as well as the big amp case used as a base for the 17.5 machine. The new power connection at the front, obviously necessary for the Type 45, was already in use before the amp was separated. And now a piece of ultra-nerdery.

Here are the two sides of a leaflet acquired at Argenteuil. The interesting point (for me!) comes on the first page. If you look closely at the two projector pix, it would appear that the solid side of the lamphouse has been replaced by a simple sliding door. This obviates the need for the cassette to hold the lamp, that I have described previously. Also interesting (") is the question of date. One might have expected the change to come with the switch to 16mm, but it would appear that the original cassette idea had a short life or there were two types running concurrently. This may well be so, as I have a 16mm Type 45 (16mm) that still uses the cassette.

     

The pictures of the SRnear the top  are after a fair bit of work, which I shall come to in a bit. You will note that I have extended the upper spool arm (in such a way that it can be restored to original if desired). This allows the use of 2000ft spools, which fit the lower arm as is. The standard spool size for 17.5 is 1000ft, two reels. This does tend to make showing features a chore, eg a 10 reeler like Lorna Doone requiring four changes. Imagine a commensurate limitation on 9.5 - a 9 reel film would require 4 and a half spools and four reel changes. Even worse on 16mm, where films tend to be longer. I have in mind to use 16mm split spools. Spindle size is the same, so they just need some holes drilling to engage with the spigot (what's it really called?) on the spool noses, and a bit of spacing to make them a bit wider.

The biggest single problem was that not only had the middle sprocket been removed, so had the internal gear driving its shaft. This had not been kept, although a non-original third sprocket did come with the machine. I had to get a gear made a complicated helical thing at considerable cost. This leaves the problem of how to hold the film onto the sprockets, the original guide rollers having disappeared and me having no clue what they were like; all the pictures I have found are not sufficiently detailed. I am having to make do with adaptations of what was there when I got the machine. I shall have to rebuild the rather crude exciter lamp arrangement.

The first job I did was to sort out the amplifier and its case. In here, everything original had been stripped out, and a pair of toroidal transformers installed on the remnants of the frame on which the amp had originally been built. These provided 110v for the motor and 24v 250w for the peanut QI lamp that had been installed. (The side of the lamphouse had also been adapted to hinge rather than unscrew). An Elf amplifier was mounted at the back, with an irregular slot cut in the rear panel of the amplifier case for the controls to be accessed.

The rear panel needed sorting, but could not be replaced, as it has folded edges which fit over the end of the main casing. I therefore covered the centre portion with a new sheet of metal, with small individual holes cut for each of the amplifier controls. The front plate was like a Gruyère cheese, holes everywhere. This I replaced entirely (but I have kept the original). Inside, I installed an Elf transformer, keeping the 110v toroidal. This enabled me to eliminate the separate exciter lamp power supply that had been fitted, using the built-in supply from a replacement Elf amp. The two ends of the amp housing were of course spray-painted.

The power feed to the lamp and motor, and the feeds to and from the switches, all pass thru a single, modern multi-pole connector (Maplin). I replaced the nasty grungy mess masquerading as a capacitor for the motor, using one Maplin have kindly added to their range. It fits inside the picture-head base. I also had to design a way of covering the exposed leads at the rear of the motor, feeding said motor and the lamp. I managed to fit a small plastic box (guess where from?), with a removable lid for access.

One problem I do not feel I have resolved satisfactorily is the provision of a motor/lamp interlock. When the machine was built, both motor and lamp would have been 110v, simplifying the connections needed, and the switches were arranged accordingly. These cannot be replaced as they are of unique double-button type, push one for on, the other for off. I ended up making the motor switch control the mains input, tho as the amp and lamp are fed from the same tranny and cannot therefore be separately controlled by this means, the amp (and the exciter) as well as the lamp is off until the motor starts. Not too bad with modern amps, but not ideal. I have since thought again, and decided that it ought to be possible to wire one motor lead at 110v and one lamp lead at 24v thru the same (motor) switch, with the other wire of each pair going direct of course. I just hope it won't blow up.

The main outstanding jobs are to rebuild the rather scrappy exciter lamp housing, and sorting out the film path.

The top sprocket has been converted to a Debrie type, with a semi-circular housing around the sprocket which in theory guides the film round. I can't get it to work reliably and keep losing the top loop with, as they say, disastrous consequences. I have studied in vain pictures of the Super Talkie/Rural, including one from my French contact (right), but cannot see enough detail to establish how (if at all) the film was held on the middle sprockett, and how the bottom sprocket retention arrangements worked. I have spent a lot of time adapting what I found when I got the machine, but I am still doubtful.

I have made a replacement housing for the sound optic, which has been thru the same paint etc process as the motor end cap for the Rural Sonore, q.v., and is waiting re-assembly. Will add pix then (see below). Also plan to remove the horrible hinge arrangement for the lamphouse door and re-instate the retaining screws. I have two and will have to make two, also some holes to fill somehow and try to match paint finish. I came to realise that infact, behind the lamphouse "door" was originally a blank plate; my predecessor had hacked a hole thru to facilitate fitting a new lamp! See pic below.

Pic1 below shows the original type of retaining roller for the hold-back (third) sprocket on a Super Rural, together with my attempt to copy it. The lump of aluminium is a length of bar, extensively shaped and cut about, with a central bore for the long arm with the slot in it. This is needed because someone actually went to the trouble to hack off the original lugs that carried the arm. Go figure. So I have had to try to make a new pair of lugs, and a means of fixing them to the machine. Tricky, as I have very little depth where it goes before hitting the shaft on which the sprocket itself sits. Rendered even more difficult by the fact that, in a masterpiece of design, the entire front arm assembly is one huge piece and at some angles won't fit my machinery.

Pix 2&3 above show how the set-up should look, and how the second one actually does look. To call this bodgery of the worst kind is hardly enough. Pic4 shows my restoration effort once completed. The final pic shows the replacement cover I made for the horrid abortion that had replaced the original sound reader.

Pic 1 above shows the layout of the soundhead area of the machine as I received it. The three small brass rollers are an addition, fixed to a plate located in a slot cut out of the face of the projector(!). You should be able to see the outline of the plate. You will note also that there is no middle sprocket. The idea of this piece of lunacy was to lengthen the film path in advance of the sound reader because of the issues I have discussed elsewhere over what is the proper length of sound separation as between French and English machines.

Pic 2 shows my first attempts to deal with this and restore the machine a bit. Not only had the third sprocket been removed, but the internal gears had been discarded too! I had new gears made; fortunately, how I know not, a third sprocket had somehow survived. I made a new plate and mounted a pair of rollers pivoted on this. As I received the machine, there was an arrangement of this type, but it had to be changed to accommodate the replaced middle sprocket. You will see the original sprocket retaining roller for the third sprocket had been removed and a plate mounted instead. To complete this little corner of madness, Pic 3 shows what was done to the top sprocket - it's supposed to be like a Debrie and is ingeniously done, but it don't work! PIc 4 is a copy of the original. My guess is that part of the reason why the Debrie-style "cage" did not work was that with 16mm, the film curl helped, whereas with 17.5 being the opposite way round......... You will note the sprocket in this pic has holes in the side. All the sprockets on the other machine have a plate fixed here which is 38mm, about 2mm more in diameter than the sprocket, so forming a guide lip to help keep the film on the sprocket. I have made one from scratch, but it's hard work and not terribly satisfactory - you can see it in one of the pictures just above. For the other two, I have some repair washers of a diameter halfway between, ie 37mm or 1.5" which I will adapt. 

SR 2  SR 3 BB1 BB2 Home Talkie Rural Sonore 

 The Super Rural is another example of the idiosyncrasy, if not downright peculiarity, of the French Pathé design team. In fact, the more I look at it, the more it seems as if they just made it up as they went along. Below is a view of the complete thing, much modified by a previous owner, and after work by me to try to recover some of the damage (see Page1). The spool arm extension (fully reversible!) is mine. Nonetheless, it gives the general idea. Many of the other shots are from a second, much more original, example, but which do not got a base at all. I set it up on the old base just for the look of the thing.

     

The machine is in three basic modules:-

- a large amplifier casing, approx 10"W x 17"L x 9""H, which sets the optical centre-line of the machine well above the norm. It suggests a huge amp, as the lamp is 110v mains and there is no tranny to take up space. Sadly, the original amp had been totally (and I do mean totally) destroyed by the time I got the machine. This casing serves as the base for:-

- the main mechanism, to the front of which attaches:-

- the spool arm module. This carries the third sprocket and the lens, and provides a direct drive by gear and shaft to the take-up spindle. I have pulled it away as far as possible to show how it fits and the spiral gear from the mech which drives this module.

This modular approach would enable the machine to be broken down for transport, initially to the operator and then by him between locations. Pathé Rural supplied their machines in very solid wooden crates; I have crates for both Rural (Rex) and Rural Sonore.

The lamphouse has a metal plate on the front, secured by four screws. Behind this is access to the lamphouse, as one would expect. Mais Non! Behind the plate is solid metal. The only access to the lamphouse is from above. The lamp is in what one could call a cassette, an arrangement I have never seen before. Presumably, one carried a spare cassette for a quick change of a hot lamp in the middle of a show. The lamp is a standard pre-focus base and it is rather fiddly to change the one actually in the cassette. The two pix show the cassette removed and sitting on top of the lamphouse. The contacts for the lamp can be seen, also the very large mirror. All this suggests a professional machine (for professional local people), so why only limited top spool arm capacity (you can just squeeze 1600' onto the lower one)? Was it intended for changeover operation?

The lamp cassette has a rim that rests on the top of the lamphouse, over two locating screws (visible in RH pic above). Over this again fits the odd, forward-facing lamphouse cap (no, it won't go on the other way round), the whole being secured by two knurled nuts. Below the protruding front of the cap is a small louvered grille, venting air from the fan up towards where the cap vents it down. This I do not understand. What I also do not understand is why it has taken me so many years to notice, as I only just have, that Pathcope's publicity pix (see Super Rural) for the Super Talkie seem to show a slightly different machine - it has no lamphouse cap and has a louvered grille in the side of the lamphouse.

We now move on to one of the oddest parts of the machine, the gate. Here are close-ups of the gate closed, part open for threading (it locks open and is released by that thin lever above the gate close to the lamphouse), and swung fully out, presumably for better access for cleaning. To me, this seems like a very cramped arrangement, with lot of little fiddly bits crammed in. The horizontal distance between the rear of the sprocket and the plane of the film is no more than 15mm (less than 0.75"), giving a very tight top loop. You can see in pic 1 below the single screw that holds the rear gate assembly in place; the only other fastening can be seen in the top view (pic 4), a knurled knob. The channel arrangement is clear in pic 2, also one can see that there are springs outside the gate channel as well as inside. Pic 3 also shows the way the mech casing has had to be shaped and cut away to let the lens get close enough to the gate. The lens barrel is Debrie size, but I have not yet been able to make a Debrie lens go far enough back to focus. There is evidence also of twiddles to deal with unexpected problems, eg the strip of metal below the second sprocket and the pin below the gate both, presumably, to stop the film getting where it shouldn't.

However, the obvious oddities here (cramped layout; complex, fiddly parts; channel surrounding both gates) are as nothing when compared with the outright weirdness of these components when removed from the machine. These pix are so old, incidentally, that they were on actual film and I've had to scan the photo's in. (So primitive, my dear.)

In pix 1 and 3, you can see a sort of shroud which butts up to the back of the gate aperture, I assume to avoid light spill; this is sprung, as the gate has to push it out of the way a bit as it turns. 5 and 6 show the cam and claw set-up; 6 is not very clear, but the dark central section is a shaped gear. The claw shuttle and cam seem to be just as in the Talkie/Natan 175, tho' the claw pins are attached at a different point. You can see from the window in 4 and 5 that there is supposed to be an oil puddle for lubrication - quite a bit of oil, actually. The problem with this is leakage; there has to be a good seal round the rim of this assembly. I have included a very dull pic of the back of the machine. It is dull because there is nothing there, ie no access to the mech. As I recall, it was very difficult to re-assemble, especially engaging the (double) cam with the shuttle frame, making achievement of a good seal almost impossible as there is too much movement involved for the sealing gunk to stay in place. And of course the flow of leaking oil runs right by the film path.

It doesn't seem to me at all obvious where this design came from or why it is so cramped. It would be fascinating to know who designed the machine, what the design brief was and what the design and its various elements was trying to achieve. The very short loops - top, bottom and third - smack to me of 35mm type design rather than narrow gauge. I just can't imagine someone sitting down and designing eg that rear gate assembly - I mean, surely you would come up with something simpler? And the size of that base! You could easily get four Talkie amps (less tranny, of course) in there and still swing the odd cat.

When I got my second machine it came by carrier and was not, in my view, adequately packed/padded on the bottom (no amp casing, remember). As you know, it is my belief all carriers break stuff and this was no exception. The bit that went in this case was the tilt mechanism, rather a wimpy affair for a machine of this size and weight, especially when fully loaded with film. In fact, it's quite difficult to use without one hand on the motor casing to take some of the load. Go back to the very first pic in this section - the tilt knob is the large silver one on the front of the mech, just above the plug for the connections from the amp casing.

This pic shows the tilt mech. The shaft has a spiral/worm gear, which engages with a track on the bottom of the mech. Next along is a collar, fixed to the shaft by a steel taper pin. Below you can see the original pin, snapped in two places by the force of the thump the projector must have had. Next is another collar; the screw thread goes into a socket on the projector. This second collar covers the first; it is impossible to reassemble the unit without first moving this second collar but, because it will not fit between the first collar and the main knob, I had to remove the main knob first. This was also held by a pin (the large pin in the pic). The end of the shaft is splined and very tight fitting, so I had to drill a hole in the front of the knob to put a punch through to knock the knob off.

A couple of shots of the ends of a Super changeover amp found at Argenteuil 2009.

Here are pix showing a combination of my tidied-up amplifier case, matched with a second Super Rural, in original condition. The final step, I suppose, will be to marry the changeover amp above with this second SR.

The Super Rural continued after the war, but with a separate amplifier, then known as the Type 45 (right). Note, too, that the new power connection at the front, obviously necessary for the Type 45 which has lost the switch block as well as the big amp case, was already in use before the amp was separated. (Pic J C Laubie)

Been playing about with my original Super Rural again and I think have got it working well. This shows the original type of retaining roller for the hold-back sprocket on a Super Rural, together with my attempt to copy it. The lump of aluminium is a length of bar, extensively shaped and cut about, with a central bore for the long arm with the slot in it. This is needed because someone actually went to the trouble to hack off the original lugs that carried the arm. Go figure. So I have had to try to make a new pair of lugs, and a means of fixing them to the machine. Tricky, as I have very little depth where it goes before hitting the shaft on which the sprocket itself sits. Rendered even more difficult by the fact that, in a masterpiece of design, the entire front arm assembly is one huge piece and at some angles won't fit my machinery.

The first two show how the set-up should look, compared with how the second one actually does look. To call this bodgery of the worst kind is hardly enough. The next two show my restoration effort once completed. The final pic shows the replacement cover I made for the horrid abortion that had replaced the original sound reader.

Pic 1 above shows the layout of the soundhead area of the machine as I received it. The three small brass rollers are an addition, fixed to a plate located in a slot cut out of the face of the projector. You should be able to see the outline of the plate. You will note also that there is no middle sprocket. The idea of this piece of lunacy was to lengthen the film path in advance of the sound reader because of the issues I have discussed elsewhere over what is the proper length of sound separation as between French and English machines.

Pic 2 shows my first attempts to deal with this and restore the machine a bit. Not only had the third sprocket been removed, but the internal gears had been discarded too! I had new gears made; fortunately, how I know not, a third sprocket had somehow survived. I made a new plate and mounted a pair of rollers pivoted on this. As I received the machine, there was an arrangement of this type, but it had to be changed to accommodate the replaced middle sprocket. You will see the original sprocket retaining roller for the third sprocket had been removed and a plate mounted instead. To complete this little corner of madness, Pic 3 shows what was done to the top sprocket - it's supposed to be like a Debrie and is ingeniously done, but it don't work! This, too, will have to be restored. You will note the sprocket in this pic has holes in the side. All the sprockets on the other machine have a plate fixed here which is 38mm, about 2mm more in diameter than the sprocket, so forming a guide lip to help keep the film on the sprocket. I have made one from scratch, but it's hard work and not terribly satisfactory - you can see it in one of the pictures just above. For the other two, I have some repair washers of a diameter halfway between, ie 37mm or 1.5" which I will adapt.

Another problem is that the Elf amp inside the casing seems to give rather distorted sound, while an external amp gives excellent results. I suppose I shall have to go in and sort it, but it's a lot of fiddling as the main plate to which the amp components are attached has to be cut about to fit, and because of the way everything is wired together, I can only test a replacement amp once more or less fully installed.

When I first wired the machine up several years ago, the only way I could find to achieve a motor/lamp interlock was to make the motor switch control the mains input to the entire machine. So there was no amp until the motor was running, and I didn't really like that. After discussion with a friend, I tried again, wiring one wire of both the 110v for the motor and the 24v for the lamp thru the motor switch together, before going on to the motor and the lamp switch. This gave me interlock OK, but as I am usually good about switching motor off before lamp, I didn't find the problem at once. For reasons that I confess are not clear to me, I now have a 2-way switch sort of arrangement. If I switch on either the lamp OR the motor switch, the motor starts. If I then operate the other switch (either the motor or lamp, depending on which I pushed first), the lamp comes on. Switching off is the same; either switch will turn the lamp off, and the other then turns the motor off. Apart from anything else, this removes the option of one-switch emergency off, the second main point of having an interlock (the first of course being to stop the lamp being on without motor.) I shall have to think again.

I have now sorted this, with much advice from Noel Pratt, by inserting a relay to control the lamp current. Basically, the motor switch is actually switching the mains supply to the motor tranny; once this switch is on, the tranny is fed and in turn feeds the motor. The switch also controls a mains feed to the relay; once the switch is on, the relay allows current to go to the lamp. If the relay is not receiving current, ie the motor switch is off, then the lamp gets no current. I did do a rough diagram which I shall try to include.

In an attempt to deal with the distorted sound problem (I hardly had to move the volume control from 0 to get sound too loud), I have added a potentiometer across the input to the amp, which I can adjust from outside via a small hole. Now working on the lamp, which I think is way out of alignment. I find along the way that the lens housing is the same size as Debrie lenses, but none of the short throw ones I have will go far enough back towards the gate to focus.

First pic shows top sprocket as restored. Seems to work well, tho' have yet to try it with damaged or extensively repaired film. 2nd is the third sprocket. The restored retaining roller is L; R I have taken advantage of the alterations that had previously been done. I have re-shaped the plate that had been fixed behind the sprocket, and used it to provide a sprung smoothing roller for the take-up. I felt the need for this partly because the take-up, gear driven from the centre of the spool arm, is not quite smooth and partly because I think the use of 2000ft reels will need this.

We then have a view into the lamphouse. Originally, this whole side of the lamphouse was solid; as you can see, a large hole was hacked into it, and a crudely-fashioned lamp arrangement inserted. I have not really changed this much, other than to give the lampholder more space for adjustment as it was way out of line, and to re-arrange the wiring so it is possible to change the lampholder without having to undo the wires from the back. The final pic shows the box I fitted to the back of the motor - where there were just bare terminals when I got the machine. Originally, the feed to the exciter lamp also went thru a (much smaller!) box here. Now the feed goes via a socket on the side of the switch housing.

J C Laubie kindly sent me a copy of the instructions for a Super Rural, which are exceedingly rare.