As one or two of you might know, I recently aquired a Bauer T610 super 8 projector, this completed my projector family and I can now grow old very happily. This is the story for the Bauer.
Again I think one or two of you were aware of a gentleman from Matlock who's father had passed away and was selling his vast collection of films, accessories and projectors. I had already purchased the Sankyo from him and so when I found out there was a Bauer T610 I did some homework and decided to have a go at winning this one too. Me and Gregor had over a period of weeks built up quite a good relationship and I had been to his house many times and met his wife etc but when he was selling anything he hadn't got a clue, this was where I came in as I could advised him what things were and what was worth anything. When it came to the Bauer, Gregor had already listed it for sale and then brought it round to my house to let me have a look at it, straight away there was a problem, it was as dead as a Dodo, it powered up but that was it, Gregor went away and amended the listing putting it had a fault but it was a serviceable fault.
Anyway I won the auction and received the projector, again I tried it but nothing, it was dead, but me being me I wasn't put off, I tried and tried again and eventually I got it running, I presume it had not been used for a while. I spoke to Bill Parsons who advised me not to run it for too long as the grease etc would be hard and would put excess wear on the motor.
Like a giddy schoolboy I stripped it down and cleaned all the excess grease of the gears etc (on Bill's advice) and then proceeded to fully service the gateway etc. I had it looking like a new pin and so decided to give it a run with a film. Oh dear what happened next was a nightmare, it wouldn't load past the removable gate but when I did manage to get it to load the noise was not good (bag of spanners springs to mind), picture wise there wasn't one viewable on screen and then to cap it all of there was no sound whatsoever.
Gutted, I packed it away and thought it can stay there till Bill can have a look at it.
Now as everyone who knows Bill will know, he is not the easiest person to get to, but this was the icing on the cake, Gregor was in the process of selling his late fathers house and you never guess where his late father lived, yep the same village as Bill, it was fate . Gregor dispatched the Bauer to Bill in february to have a look at, first impression wasn't good, everything was wrong with it and it needed everything doing to it, but Bill did a "Six Million Dollar Man" job on it and got it going again even soldering a cracked main circuit board, the mans a pure and utter genius
. I got Gregor to pick it up and deliver it back to me, again the schoolkid in me was excited, I even forced my wife to sit there while I tried it out for the first time (I had to give her a nudge as she fell asleep). It purred like a kitten, I was so pleased. Up to yet I have only run a couple of bits through it but to say I am impressed is an understatement, I would say the picture is better than the GS1200. I now have a complete family of projectors which as mentioned earlier fingers crossed will keep me going well into my old age