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My major beef with the old SPECO MUTs was the fact that I never saw one with keeper rollers. No way in hell would I run film over them at varying twists and turns without those keepers! Fortunately, the district manager at the time (about 12 years ago) was officed in the booth and saw my concern and generously ordered them. I then no longer had any real issues with the older style MUTs. However, a vertical design is MUCH more desirable for many reasons. Most importantly, the film barely twists at all, you can put an overloaded reel of film on the spindle and not worry about having 4 hands as Ian pointed out and you can even use 16,000 foot reels on them (load only, never for breakdown). In a pinch, paying out to a sold out house direct off of the MUT to save the half hour or so of loading time saved me many times.

I also made them electrically compatible to the platters they were being used with.

After the projectionists used them, they liked them so well that they put the remaining tables (SPECO, XETRON, and STRONG) behind the screen somewhere to collect cobwebs.

Ian

fair enough, it totally sucks. But there is tension on the payout spindle.
The mechanism is not brilliant but it does work if adjusted correctly.
I repaired a pair about 2 months ago. both payouts were, like the review one
I expect, totally freewheeling. This is not good when combined with the
horizontal reel. It's not good with a vertical reel either, but spinning
back from the floor is better than dealing with a ring of film on the table.
I had never seen one before, and just got curious about the spring on the
payout shaft assembly. Designed by someone apparently unfamiliar with
friction, it isn't immediately obvious how it should work.
Anyway, just to be fair it does have a (poor) tension system. Still crap
though.

1) One needs to remove the takeup drive thingy (plate? shaft?) to remove the
top and change the light bulb, clean the powerstat, or access contraband
stored inside.
2) The drive thingy is not keyed to the stub shaft, so skill is required
when attaching it so as to avoid eventually sawing through the motor stub
shaft with the setscrew. (see #1) The setscrew must also be regularly
tightened or it will cut a ring sooner or later.
3) The feed spindle tension is poorly designed and cannot be adjusted during
use.
4) The fuseholder is a piece of crap and luckily is also used on some old
crap in the back so I don't have to try and find new caps yet when they
break.

DW Macaulay dwmacaulay@home.com

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