Theatre woofers

[Thom]

Where are all the ampex/jbl theatre woofers? I have one. I used to have two The theatre mine came out of had eight. They have salvaged thousands of theatres over the years, and I've never seen another one in my life, which to many peoples dismay, has been several years. I thought mine was made at the dawn of time, but I've learned that's not the case because it has a cast and machined magnet pot. I've poured through the internet looking for someone who might be in the theatre salvage business. These were originaly used infinet baffel but my god you, enough! I'd just like to know if anybody has any information. Sure whish I'd bought eight, but couldn't afford it when they were tearing the Alhambra down. This was a real upscale movie house, but it couldn't have been the only one, and it seems like no one wants to listen to a straight sided stiff suspinsion speaker like that today, so they should be somewhere.

[Steve Schell]

All or most of the blue label "Jim Lansing by Ampex" woofers I have seen have been the 150-4 32 ohm model. I have seen several dozen of them over the years, either on ebay or in the hands of dealers and collectors. These woofers have been a cherished collectible among overseas audiophiles for at least 30 years, probably due to their similarity to the 150-4C 16 ohm woofer used in the early Paragons and Hartsfields. My guess is that most of the surviving ones have been exported, as the vintage audio dealers have always been able to get good money for them.

[Don McRitchie]

There never were that many JBL theater systems to begin with prior to the 1980's. Altec Lansing was by far the dominant supplier to the cinema industry, starting in the 1940s and lasting through the 1970s. In 1953, the Altec Voice of the Theatre was certified as a loudspeaker standard by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This certification gave Altec a standing in the industry that was impossible to dislodge. It was only when the industry adopted a new standard (THX) that a window of opportunity opened up. The THX standard was developed using JBL speakers and it allowed JBL to turn the tables on Altec to pretty much shut them out of the industry.

Prior to THX, JBL mainly limited their forays into the theatre market as a partner in joint ventures. They were too small and saw too many risks in attempting to dislodge Altec on their own. In hindsight, it was a wise move because the first three JBL theatre initiatives were ultimately all failures. Had JBL been forced to assume the risks of these failures on their own, it could have very well sunk the company.

The three major initiatives were the Westrex collaboration in 1953, the Ampex TODD AO project of the same year, and the Ampex Cinetron project of 1965. The Westrex project was limited to foreign markets and had some initial success. However, by the end of the 50s that collaboration had ended with Westrex never becoming a major cinema supplier. The TODD AO project was intended to be competition to the then new Cinerama widescreen projection and multichannel sound system. However, the TODD AO system was always in the shadow of Cinerama, and by the end of the 50s, the sound system portion of that project had ended as well. I believe that I read somewhere that less than 100 theatres installed the TODD AO sound system.

The Cinetron system was Ampex's second attempt to break into the cinema market with their own sound system using JBL speakers. A whole family of speakers was developed for large mains, small mains, and fill speakers. According to the developer, exactly one system was installed before the project was canceled.

[spkrman57]

Thanks Don for the background on the cinema scene.:)

I knew Altec had a good standing in the theater community, but I thought JBL was with them to a lesser degree.

I guess with looking at JBL being a cinema giant now that it seems less possible that Altec was leader in field in such great numbers.

Regards, Ron

[Thom]

I can't believe this was a one off system. Take a D130 frame. Put a ring on the front of it, mabe 3/8 of an inch thick to make it deeper. Stick a magnet assembly from a 375, complete with a machined face and 4 drilled and tapped holes, hand make a cone, you can see the overlap. Use a smaller hand made cone for a dust cap and then hand glue three paper rings around the outside at various heights for stiffening and thats it. What would have been the throat if it had become a driver was stuffed with glass. I thought that maybe this was one of there very first jobs, but the magnet structure is cast and machined so that meens at least mid 50's. It weighs maybe 32 lbs. Have you seen that? The top end for the system was 375 (more than one) with that venetion blind looking lens thats maybe 4 or 5 feet wide. This didn't say "Jim lansing" this is painted black wrinkle and just says ampex, But I know that frame and I Know that magnet.
I haven't spent my life looking for it or anything but I've sort of kept an eye out, for more than twenty five years.

[Mr. Widget]

This didn't say "Jim lansing" this is painted black wrinkle and just says ampex...Do you have a camera? A photo would probably help the hardcore vintage sleuths figure it out. Since it came out of a theater, I doubt it was a one-off prototype...


Widget

[Steve Schell]

Thom, I'll second Widget's suggestion that you post some photos of this driver- it sounds fascinating. The added ring on the front to allow a deeper straight sided cone is normal for the 15-4 type drivers, but the 375 motor is not. With the handmade cone it does sound like a prototype or someone's hand made construction. There are quite a few oddball one-off drivers out there, many of them prototypes, and if they worked they were often put to work in some application. It is always fun to study them.

A friend of mine has been developing a new line of drivers in both permanent magnet and field coil versions. Just as you described, he has been mating JBL large format compression driver pots to JBL baskets for his prototypes. A 375 motor has a bigger alnico magnet than any of the JBL woofer motors, and there is also room in that big pot for a larger field coil.

There are several instances where Jim Lansing used the same dimensions on different products. The Lansing and Altec Lansing large format compression drivers, JBL D-130 and 131 all used the same six fastener locations and hardware size to secure pot, top plate and basket (cone drivers). A 288 pot will bolt right on to a D-130 basket.

Another friend has what may be a one off prototype 15" coaxial driver. It is labeled "Vondee, Los Angeles" and "VD-1A." It has a beautifully cast basket and pot structure. It uses a field coil motor for the woofer; the coil is dated 1944. It seems to be inspired by the Altec 601 15" field coil Duplex of 1943, as the basket is very similar to the field coil Lansing baskets though a bit fancier. It was fitted with a Lansing cone kit with 2" voice coil and phenolic spider. A hole is bored through the woofer center pole to provide a path for the high frequencies. At the rear the hole is enlarged and threaded to accept a screw on driver. When my friend acquired it a later vintage Atlas compression driver was installed and the combination was in a utility cabinet. I'd post pictures but my regular computer is out for repairs.

I've searched ebay and the web but have yet to find out anything about Mr. Vondee. Perhaps he was an understudy or competitor to Jim Lansing, but who could tell us about it now?

[Thom]

It's at my mothers in Sacromento. I live in San Jose. Anyone from this area knows thats pretty close so I'll grab it next chance I get which should be pretty quick and take some digital photos of it. It had to be a factory job because of the two that I had one had been machined to fit a horn an one had not but they were the same. I figured they had run out of the pots that had set aside for woofers so they just grabbed one that had allready been machined. I think the one I still have left is the machined one. I really don't know when the sound system went into the Alhambra, but I always thought the speakers were from before JBL the company, like sometime in the 40's but from reading here they had to be at least 54 or 55. The first thing that hit me when I looked at it was the Magnet and then the dust cap. I had always pictured James Lansing making it but not so I guess.

[Don McRitchie]

Thom

Are you sure that the woofers you have are not what is illustrated below? This is the JBL 150-4. As result of the Ampex TODD AO collaboration of 1953, Ampex secured the rights to manufacture JBL drivers and enclosures in their own facilities. The 150-4 was one of these drivers and it was the most frequently used bass driver in their theatre systems.

To Steve, I've never been able to get definitive measurements, but I believe that the 375 motor did not use the largest magnet of all JBL drivers. From cutaway illustrations, it looks like the LE15 magnet was larger. That magnet is a solid slug of 4" nominal diameter Alnico. Ed May needed to specify a huge magnet for his design of the LE15 because of the underhung motor topology combined with a relatively high x-max for the times. To get any kind of reasonable sensitivity, he needed a huge total flux since much of it would be lost to the motor for the portions of the deep gap that were not filled with wire from the shorter coil.

[Bob Womack]

The six-track TODD-AO system was selected as the audio system for the VistaVision system of 1957. This involved horizontally sprocketed, wide-screen projection with surround sound. Essentially, they turned 35mm film on its side and fed it horizontally through the camera and shot on twice the frame width. Only two theaters were ever built in VistaVision and only one film was released. Those theaters still exit and are still maintained with their TODD-AO surround arrays. The film has gone on to become the longest continually-shown film in movie history and the film shown to the highest aggregate audience in history.

First the technical details. TODD-AO sound consists of five speakers arrayed behind the screen and one channel of surround, distributed to speakers in the ceiling. The theater is designed with the rows of seats lying in anechoic "tubs", consisting of an absorptive wall fore and aft, that are built high enough to isolate each row both acoustically and visually from the others. We could use that in the age of cel phones. The acoustic result is proper radiation from the front array and a very intimate surround coming from above.


http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Summer04/images/patriot_theater.jpg


In 2001, the film underwent a refurbishment at Cinesite, the now-defunct Kodak film restoration organization. The soundtrack was returned to TODD-AO to be remixed. Interestingly, the TOOD-AO folks had to do a little research to recall the details of their own, long dead sound format. ;) What is this film and where are these theaters? The film is The Patriot, an introductory drama directed by George Seaton (Miracle on 34th Street) and starring a very young Jack Lord (Hawaii 5-0) shown continually throughout the day at Colonial Williamsburg, VA's two original theaters. The cast is a virtual "whos-who" of character actors from the period, which is amazing because the whole lot of them had to be picked up and transported to the Williamsburg Colonial District, where the film was shot. The restoration of the film was an amazing feat, given that the works prints, masters prints, and separations had all decayed after forty years. As an example of the lengths to which they had to go, they were able to salvage color-correction of some of the scenes because the buildings used in the film still existed and because the costumes from the film had been conserved by Williamsburg's museum currators the same way as the actual 1700s period artifact clothing in the collection and were available for color comparison.

I have a little hisory with the film: The film premiered on March 31, 1957, a month before I was born. On my first visit to Virginia and Williamsburg in 1962, I first saw it. Right about the time the restored film was premiered, I discovered the history and restoration of the film. After I tracked down the man in charge of the restoration, I was fortunate to meet the crew responsible for the restoration and to be given a half-day tour through the complex as a professional courtesy. If you are in the area, knowing the history of the film adds a little bit to your enjoyment of a trip to Williamsburg, the colonial capital of the colonies. Here's more:

http://www.history.org/Foundation/journal/Summer04/patriot.cfm

http://www.history.org/foundation/general/patriot_restored.cfm

Bob

Addendum: The Patriot theaters and the film were converted to standard 70mm in the late 1960s. The VistaVision projectors were sold to ILM and have been used since in special effects operations. The six-track TODD-AO soundtrack is now played off DVD in English with simul-cast of up to six languages available via Acousti-wand headsets.

[speakerdave]

Jeez, I love this forum. We got class!

It is so cool to start looking at threads of a Saturday morning and come upon a gem like this. Thank you very much.

David

[Thom]

I'll get pictures as soon as I can. There were eight woofers behind the screen and the magnet assy looked like a 375 and at least on of the magnet pots had actually had the face (on the woofer it was the back) machined flat and four mounting holes (as in horn mounting) drilled and tapped. the outside of the cone was (is) three paper rings running around it at three different distances from the speaker edge the rings are on edge and obviously hand glued, parts of this speaker are so hand made that I was sure it was made before the start of JBL as a company. I now now that the D130 (without the "O" ring groove on the back) casting and even more the cast and machined magnet pot means 55 at the earliest. Again will get pictures at earliest chance. I'm not sure but I think the Alhambra was one of the earliest 70 mm theatres I'm not real expert at such things so if that last statement shows me to know nothing of early cinema didn't say I did. The add on to the frame is probably the same.

[Thom]

As to magnet sizes that is where JBL did a little of a P T Barnum bit. Altec was advertising magnet weights LBL advertised "magnet assy weight. D130 11lbs, 375 27lbs, many years later LE15A 19 lbs. When I get pictures you'll recognise the 375 pot. I think it was the only other pot they had for a 4" voice coil. Every thing I've red suggests same magnet structure D130 and 150-4. I have no Idea what is under the pot or the reason for it or yhe hand made cone or the reason for using an inverted cone for a dust cover.

[Thom]

Dug out this woofer have pictures of it next to an LE 15A And a D130. Gave up trying to post them tonight will try again tomorow. The surround which is paper is starting to rot which is kind of a hartbreaker. If you rest it on the floor on it's magnet and do the same with an LE15A the LE 15 will slide underneath it. I used to have a pair in a C55 cabinet and it sounded like nothing I ever heard. From all I've read it couldn't have hit the lowest octive but you couldn't tell me that then. A Virgil Fox Record could clear the neghborhood. The Alhambra theatre was builyt in 1927 so the sound systym could not have been originol. It was the fanciest movie house I ever saw. It had lodge seating in the rear were gorgeos sofas and not. The city of Sacramento renamed 31st street to Alhambra after the theatre. I new the guy whosalvaged the sound system. He sad it didn't say JBL or JIM Lansing or anything else except Ampex. When I figure out how to get the pictures up you'll see the magnet pot looks like the front of a 375 including a machined surface 4 holes and a 2 inch hole. The top plate is several times thicker than a D130 but not quite as thick as a Le15/K145 but the magnet dwarfs the LE15
I know they made 8. I never had any reason to believe they were real rare till one day I put it together that nobody I have ever spoken with has ever seen one. It has the stiffist cone (not suspension) that I have efer seen and then it has those stiffining rings glued to it.

[Thom]

Give me a break. The website says the max dementions for a file are 1024 x 0
they were large files at first and I compressed them but not that far. Is that one of the features that we got the new system for?

[Zilch]

Doesn't say "0", Thom.

It DOES spec a max filesize for different file types, tho....

[Thom]

I beg your pardon but it gives me a message saying the max size for my type of file(my file is jpg but it doesn't say that) is 1024 by 0 and my file is too large. Originaly my pictires were about 4 meg but I used photo shop to cut them down to about 250K same message. I notice there is a chart with many file types listed and a width and height for ea. except that there is no number in the height box for any of the file types. I wonder if that could be the problem. I would find it highly likely but I wouldn't actually bet money on it. My computer is the pits right now also. I klicked something on a JBL websight and my desk top is swarming with ikons for jbl files and as fast as you get rid of them or try to stack them up in one folder you get copy 1 and 2 and 5 it's nuts.

[Don McRitchie]

Is that one of the features that we got the new system for?

Kindly tone down the snark. There is no restriction on the height of a jpg image; that is why it is indicated with a "-" and not a number. There is a filesize restriction so as not to create undue bandwidth and storage issues. Even at that, it is currently set to over 500kb per jpg which is more than enough for images up to 1024 pixels wide. As you can see from the photo below, the attachements feature is working as it should. This is a 1024 X 1536 image that has a file size of 283kb.

[Thom]

Apparently the one dimension can't be more than 1024 regardles of file size but the message it gives you doesn't exactly tell you that. Now that it said I uploaded 5 files I wonder where I uploaded them to. Now as if I didn't have enough to do I have to go look up snark.

[Don McRitchie]

No, it says the width can't be more than 1024 pixels. The height can be anything, as evidenced by the 1536 pixel height of the image above. After you upload the images, you have to go back to the original post that the images are attached to and save it, otherwise the upload will not be complete.

Don

[Thom]

picture Does that magnet pot look like it was in a pile to become a 375 befor someone grabbed it or what? This last picthre is a d130, anLE15 and whatever I have here. The le15 is a little taller thal the 130 as the mag is a little larger the le15 fits right under the other one.

[Zilch]

Well, I can see your pics now, Thom.... :applaud:

Good SHOW!

[I can't ID the driver, tho. Never seen one like it....]

[Thom]

They stuffed insid the pot. wonder what that did?

[Steve Schell]

Hi Thom, group,

We have a genuine mystery here, a real "whodunit."

Truth being stranger than fiction, a friend told me a few days ago that he had acquired a rare, likely prototype JBL 15" woofer. It had been disassembled by the prior owner, but all the pieces were there. When he mentioned that it appeared to use a 375 pot for the motor, I told him about Thom's recent thread here.

He has temporarily assembled the driver, though the dust cap has not been reattached yet. He plans to restore it to function as all parts are in decent enough shape.

He dropped it off with me the other day so that I could photograph it for this thread. Unfortunately I cannot load pictures at the moment as I am using a borrowed computer. This one is virtually identical to Thom's though; same cone, including three glued concentric stiffeners on the back. Same treatment of the edge of the cone, though a little sloppier on this one. The pointed dust cap is also the same, as are all the motor parts. The only difference is that "model 520" is crudely stencilled on the side of the pot in white paint.

Now we know that Ampex used a lot of JBL equipment in their systems all through the 1950s. In fact, their needs exceeded JBL's capacity to supply, so they built their own factory in North Hollywood and paid JBL a royalty on a per unit basis. Ampex built both woofers and 375 compression drivers at this facility, so they would have had the driver parts on hand to construct this hybrid.

The Cinaudagraph woofers of the late 1930s and 1940s used a pointed paper dust cap. Rudy Bozak was their chief engineer, and he continued to use them after he founded his own company in the late 1940s.

My hunch is that these rare examples were either prototypes or a short production run of an attempt at an improved woofer for the Ampex bass systems. With the combination of fresh thinking and borrowed good ideas, my guess is that a single individual was likely responsible for them; I just wish I knew who he was!

My friend says that he has seen two or three other examples of these woofers over the years, though the cones were different and they may have been reconed. Since Thom saw eight of them at the Alhambra, this argues in favor of them being a production item, at least for a short time.

There are a couple of people I can think of who might be able to help solve the mystery, so I will try to contact them.

[Thom]

Not all of them had 4 drilled and tapped holes on the bach of the pot otherwise they were the same.

[Steve Schell]

I spoke with a fellow today who related the recollections of a friend of his about these woofers. Apparently his friend took apart Ampex speaker systems years ago in two large 70mm movie theatres in San Francisco. There were reportedly a large quantity, something like 20 of these 375 pot woofers instaled in those houses in the big Ampex horn bins. So it does appear that they were manufactured in some quantity, as the various accounts tally to at least 30 of them so far. I am attempting to reach the fellow who removed them from the theatres, and will report in when I do.

[CONVERGENCE]

Hi

You said someting about San Francisco theatres. Quote:

" Apparently his friend took apart Ampex speaker systems years ago in two large 70mm movie"

Can you ask him if it was any of these please.


" The Coronet, the Alexandria, and the Taravel"

Thanks

[Thom]

It probably means nothing, but in the Alhambra they were infininte baffle. They mounted behind the screen and the back of them was in a large room. The room wall was the baffle. I didn't see this personally, but the guy I got them from was knowledgable enough to be acurate. I thought they should have been in C55 horn enclosures but maybe ampex didn't use those.

[Steve Schell]

I spoke today with the gentleman who removed the big Ampex systems from the theatres in San Francisco years ago. His name is Paul Mundt. He said that the woofers were installed in large bass horns with mouths 7' by 7'. In addition to the four 15" 375 pot woofers, each horn used a 10" mid bass driver and had an unusual phasing plug structure in the throat of the horn. A friend of his will be scanning and emailing to me some original Ampex literature on this horn, which was part of the Todd-AO system. I will post the images here when I receive them. I'm beginning to suspect that these 375 pot woofers may have been a special model produced by Ampex for Todd-AO.

Paul also mentioned that these systems used special high frequency horns consisting of what appeared to be modified Altec 1503 multicellulars. Each horn used two 288 drivers on a Y throat, oriented vertically instead of the usual horizontal arrangement. There was some sort of perforated metal screening installed in the horn throat as well.

Convergence, the two theatres were the Alexandria and the Cononet. I looked them up on the Cinema Treasures site and read that Mike Todd had personally supervised the installation of his system at the Alexandria in preparation for the debut of Oklahoma in September, 1956.

[Thom]

Interesting, This system had 375's with that wavy lens that is about four feet wide. Still could have been purpose built for the structure I suppose. I didn't see them but I think he would know the diffefence and the lens sure says JBL, maybe.

[Mr. Widget]

Convergence, the two theatres were the Alexandria and the Cononet. I looked them up on the Cinema Treasures site and read that Mike Todd had personally supervised the installation of his system at the Alexandria in preparation for the debut of Oklahoma in September, 1956.
I have seen quite a few major film releases at the Coronet over the years... unlike many of our other larger older movie houses here in SF, the Coronet was architecturally a real dog... however if you sat in about the twentieth row it was quite a spectacular show. I saw Earthquake there back in the mid '70s with the massive Cerwin Vega noise woofers. I am not sure when they pulled the Ampex system out of the Coronet, but in the mid '90s they put a new JBL system in and the audio quality improved markedly. Deeper, cleaner bass... truer highs, and a lot less honk.

The Alexandria, while a much nicer venue architecturally never had a particularly spectacular sound or projection system... at least from the '70s on... The Alhambra on Polk Street was really an architectural marvel, and was quite a good theater especially after the sound system was upgraded in the mid '90s. Unfortunately since parking was always impossible it just couldn't compete with the newer megaplexes.


Widget

[CONVERGENCE]

I was impressed by one theatre in San Francisco. I can't find yhe wb site for now.

It was very grand something like this.

[CONVERGENCE]

I must apologize to the folks in San Francisco. The original pictures of the 1927 Alexandra are no longer available on the Web.
The following Jewel theatres which perform brodway shows are still alive and well.Curran ,Golden Gate. Orpheum. The first 2 photos Orpheum and third Curran.

.................................................. ..................................................

[garyrc]

Convergence, the two theatres were the Alexandria and the Cononet. I looked them up on the Cinema Treasures site and read that Mike Todd had personally supervised the installation of his system at the Alexandria in preparation for the debut of Oklahoma in September, 1956.

I know I'm a few years late in answering this email, but ...

I haunted both theaters and saw every 70 mm film multiple times. Actually it was the Coronet that Todd supervised setting up Todd-AO for. The Alexandria got 70mm about 2 years later, when South Pacific had no place to go, since Around the World in 80 Days was still running at the Coronet ... well into its second year! So the chronology was: Oklahoma! opened in Todd-AO (along with a short modestly titled "The Miracle of Todd-AO") in 1955, 80 Days opened in 1956, and was still running in 1958 when South Pacific needed a 70mm theater, so they equipped the Alexandria at that point.

The design of the late, lamented Coronet was ideal for the original 70 mm Todd-AO -- it was not meant to be a movie "palace," but an optimum venue for 70 mm projection. There was no stage or orchestra pit to take up space, so the seats went right down to a small apron just in front of the screen. The walls curved down in an almost blunt bullet snouted shape to a deeply curved set of curtains that filled the wall, top to bottom and side to side, except for small, but sweeping lip on the ceiling to hold the lights i.e., the curtains filled the tip of the bullet. For the first few films in 70 mm, the deeply curved screen completely filled the area behind the curtains. The effect was highly immersive..

Unfortunately, the huge curved screen was eventually taken out, and a smaller, flatter screen put in to accommodate 70 mm processes that didn't have Todd-AO's correction for the curve. They left the curtains alone, though. I believe that the latest image of the Coronet on Cinema Treasures, taken with the house lights fully on, and the curtains almost all the way open (just before the theater was torn down), clearly shows all of the possible image configurations: Original 70 mm Todd-AO absolutly filled the entire area, right up to the curtains, and the curtains opened just a tad more to the left and right. Later 70mm filled the expanse between the fluting on either side, and did not go all the way to the top where the funky wrinkled mblack material is. The image was still big, row for row bigger on one's retinas than 35 mm would be, but nothing compared to the old image. The (smooth) mask is open to the size that conventional 35 mm 'scope would fill. I would reproduce the image here, but it is copyrighted.

The history of the sound at the Coronet isn't simple. The original Todd-AO system was warmer, and better, IMO, sounding than the later systems. It seemed to have wider -- and incredible -- dynamic range than the later systems, even though there was little bass below about 40 Hz. Speaking of bass, the impact of the thunderstorm and implied earthquake in Ben-Hur was very convincing, and where we were sitting (in the 11th row) we could feel the wind the speakers were creating with those thunderclaps. I was told by a manager that the speakers were JBL in a special Todd-AO sound system built by Ampex.

In later years ... about the time of Star Wars, an elaborate Dolby system was brought in that had more bass extension, but often seemed harsher, to my ears.

[garyrc]

I believe that the latest image of the Coronet on Cinema Treasures, taken with the house lights fully on, and the curtains almost all the way open (just before the theater was torn down), clearly shows all of the possible image configurations: Original 70 mm Todd-AO absolutly filled the entire area, right up to the curtains, and the curtains opened just a tad more to the left and right. Later 70mm filled the expanse between the fluting on either side, and did not go all the way to the top where the funky wrinkled mblack material is. The image was still big, row for row bigger on one's retinas than 35 mm would be, but nothing compared to the old image. The (smooth) mask is open to the size that conventional 35 mm 'scope would fill. I would reproduce the image here, but it is copyrighted..

O.K., it turns out that it was not Cinema Treasures, but this:
http://www.outsidelands.org/image.php?img=/images/coronet-interior-2005.jpg

[Mr. Widget]

O.K., it turns out that it was not Cinema Treasures, but this:
http://www.outsidelands.org/image.php?img=/images/coronet-interior-2005.jpgWhat that image doesn't show is the depth of the Coronet... if you didn't get to the theater early... usually requiring a long wait in line in the Richmond District's typical drizzly fog, you would have to sit so far back in the theater the screen size felt like a TV...

Your comment about the sound system update around the time of Star Wars makes sense... most of my experience with that theater was after the release of Star Wars and while the sound wasn't terrible, it got much better when they updated it again later in the early '90s.


Widget

[BillR]

Thom, Do you still have the Ampex 520 Theatre woofer with the 375 pot?

[garyrc]

I'll say that the sound at the Coronet for 80 Days (1956) was the best, in many ways, I've ever heard in a theater, or over a high end sound system to this day. The 114 piece orchestra was rich and warm, as well as having unbelievable dynamics. We heard that the sound levels were specified by Todd, and that he and his 1st. A.D. were sitting together for the premier, and the A.D. tried to get him to turn it down. Todd apparently won. We heard from several sources that the Coronet had JBL speakers at the time, so I think it's true. I don't know if the Coronet was "4-walled" by Magna, or owned by UA theaters in 1956. Incidentally, the sound quality of 80 Days never made it onto disk or tape of any kind, including the soundtrack on Lp, which was particularly bad. There was a rumor that for 80 Days and Oklahoma! they were using double system in the booth, with the 6 soundtracks on a strip of full coat magnetic 35 mm film, running in sync with the 70 mm picture film. This would be expected to result in higher sound quality, and more headroom given the same noise floor.


What that image doesn't show is the depth of the Coronet... if you didn't get to the theater early... usually requiring a long wait in line in the Richmond District's typical drizzly fog, you would have to sit so far back in the theater the screen size felt like a TV...

Widget





Yes, it was quite deep, but not as deep as some other Bay Area theaters in the '50s.

For the first several 70 mm films shown at the Coronet (Oklahoma!, 80 Days, Porgy and Bess, Ben-Hur), reserved seat tickets solved the "too deep theater" problem. No way would my friends and I consider sitting in the rear 1/2 of the theater.:) We went to the ticket office to the right of the Coronet (toward the Ocean) and deliberately ordered tickets in the 9th, 10th, or 11th row from the screen, where the picture was overwhelming, but sharp and detailed (considerably more so than 'scope in 35 mm) The first time I saw Oklahoma!, it was from the 18th row (the bottom section originally had 20 rows), and it was quite immersive, but it stirred a hunger to move even closer, which we did for other showings.
In later years, when there were no reserved seats, we would stop by the theater early to get our tickets for a much later showing, then go eat. We had no difficulty getting good downstairs seats, but, in the case of Star Wars, put it off for a while, until after the demand lessened.
We devised a way to measure relative image size using a detachable camera viewfinder I had. It happened that the original 70 mm Todd-AO image at the Coronet just filled the finder (set for a 50mm lens) from top to bottom from the last row downstairs (row 20). Of course the image spilled out on both sides, but we decided to use height as our index, since almost all of the theaters we frequented were set up for "common height," with most widescreen images the same height, but truly wider than standard (unlike on today's letterbox on CRTs and flatscreens). Using this finder, we found that image height for the original 70 mm Todd-AO at the Coronet in the 20th row from the screen was the same as the 35 mm image height in the 5th row from the screen at the Grand Lake -- a traditional movie palace in Oakland.
The above gargantuan size didn't last long. By the time of the 70 mm Star Wars, for instance, one had to sit in the 12 th row at the Coronet to equal the 5th row in 35 mm at the Grand Lake.
Disney's Sleeping Beauty in 70 mm, released on the same bill as Disney's Grand Canyon, using Ferde Grofe's music, offered an opportunity to confirm that 70 mm at the Coronet was both higher and wider than 35 mm CinemaScope. When Sleeping Beauty started, the first shot, "Walt Disney Presents" was the same size as was Canyon in CinemaScope, a minute or two before. Then the image expanded greatly in both directions during the title shot. Since the Sleeping Beauty run did not use reserved seats, we tried moving up to the front row center, and it was sharp as a tack, with minimal grain, even up there!

[JBL 4645]

Are there any pictures of Eisenhower Theatre in Washington D.C. as it appeared in the 1980’s?

Just curious that’s all, as I’ve been watching the making of FireFox and the film had special guest screening there around (1982). The video only shows a narrow view of what it looks like. I’m not sure if, I’m looking at the correct cinema on the website it looks too modernized.

Also what cinema PA speakers and Dolby processor was cinema theatre using around the time, was it a CP100 which or CP200.

Cheers