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photographs and loaned catalogues.Home 9.5 16 Multi-gauge 17.5 28 Pix Miscellany
THE JOINVILLE SERIES
Pathé finally turned out some near conventional equipment that
was in a different class to anything that had gone before. Named after Pathé's
Joinville works, this series included the Pax as sold in the UK, but also
magnetic or dual-system sound machines, and 16mm versions, too. Terry Vacani
contacted me after seeing this site in the very early days, and kindly provided
photographs and loaned catalogues.
Many people in the UK will be familiar with the Pax (see
pic, from my copy of the Pax Instruction Book). It was infuriating, however,
that a machine that should
have set new standards for 9.5 was marred by a number of faults: a noisy motor,
with governor speed control that was tricky to adjust, a badly-designed
sound-reading set-up with that silly mirror, (although nowadays photodiodes
offer a solution to this particular problem) and the abomin
able chute. Here also
are Terry's pix of the real thing, (right) and an improved model with a bigger
amplifier, left. He tells me all his French machines have a steel main pulley,
which carries the shutter. Only in the Pax as sold in the UK is there a
Mazac pulley (see below). My own experience with the
Pax is not very happy. I had a 9-reel feature, of which the three middle reels
began to split from the sprockets towards the edge of the film. I blamed this on
the excessive resistance offered by the chute arrangement. My theory
.JPG)
runs like
this. Most sound projectors rely on the weight and inertia of a flywheel, with
the film held against it by rollers. This is a dynamic arrangement; once the
system is in motion the actual pull on the sprocket holes is reduced to just
what is needed to replace friction losses. In the Pax, the drag of the chute is
a constant dead weight. Particularly if a film is slightly oversize, or very
new, or splicey, or weak to start with, the constant full-force drag can be such
as to damage the film. I do know that a number of people have replaced the chute
with a more conventional arrangement. Anyway, by what was, even in the late 60's
when this happened, a huge fluke of luck, I managed to acquire a spare copy of
just those middle reels. I went back to the Super Vox, a machine which, along
with the standard Vox, I have always found to be very kind to films and tolerant
of damage.
.JPG)
Terry
also has a 9.5 Marignan magnetic-sound-only machine, (right) and a 16mm Cinéric
magnetic machine (left); all of his machines are ones of which I am deeply
envious. Note lack of chutes on magnetic machines. Also separate
amplifiers for some.
Below are some images from two instruction books Terry kindly loaned - I do love some of this artwork.
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Tony Saffrey has kindly provided pictures of the conversion work to his Pax some years ago.
The Pax has a belt drive from the motor to a pulley, on
which is mounted the shutter. The pulley in UK models is made from Mazak, and has a tendency to distort and ultimately disintegrate, just like the
flywheel in a Baby projector. The pulley runs in a narrow slot between lamphouse and
projector body, so any distortion causes it to start rubbing
. With the awkward
brush arrangement for the speed control contacts, it's all terribly difficult
and fiddly to get at. I had to do this once, and get a pulley made (courtesy
Buckingham Film Services). I made a drawing for making the new one. It all
worked out OK; somebody else might find this of use.
These are pix I pinched from ebay, I think. Originally there was garden where there is now blue.
