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Another thing I have seen is that people have put Slow-blow fuses in, thinking that would help. This is another big NO-NO! Luckily, I caught that one in time and I reamed out the guy who did it, then made him go around and put all the right fuses back in.

The most common problems I have seen from putting the wrong fuses in are blown payout control cards and fried contacts on the switch banks. The second most common thing is a fried variac. Replacing variacs and payout cards is pretty academic. It's just the cost and inconvenience (and lost shows) that causes you the most heartache. However, changing out those switches is a royal pain in the arse! I have had to do it about 1/2 dozen times over the years. Unsoldering the wires and reconnecting them is just about the worst job you'll have to do when it comes to repairing Specos. You only have a few inches of wire to work with so you don't have much room for error when it comes to cutting and stripping wires. Not only that, you don't have much room to manuver, even when you take the whole switch bank apart.
The fact that Speco has changed the design of the switches doesn't help much. You have to figire out where the new connections are and if you don't get it right, you'll cause more trouble. I had to undo somebody else's handywork in that area once and it took me a whole day to first figure out what was screwed up and then to redo it again correctly. IF you have one of the newer Speco designs the switch change is rather painless because they have made it so that they just plug in. The problems come when you have to "retrofit" a new switch into the old wiring scheme.

I have no problems with people putting a 5 amp fuse into the bottom of the tree as long as they remember to never press two buttons of the same color at the same time. I know accidents happen sometimes but with some people, it's like talking to a brick wall. (The instruction manual plainly states that you should never do that, even with a 3 amp fuse.)

If you can't drum in into people's thick skulls how to work the equipment properly I just think it's better to leave a 3 amp fuse in there, like it was originally, and leave well enough alone. The only problem is that you either have to drum it into their skulls about the buttons or you have to drum it into people's skulls about not running the make up tables at top speed. It's a catch-22 situation. That's why I didn't mention it in the first place.

At least, with the Christie MUTs, I can "handicap" them by lowering the maximum speed control so that they don't run too fast. I have taken to doing that at selected locations because they were scratching film when they were making up the movie for the first time. In places where this has happened, handicapping the tables has minimized the problem.

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A long time a ago there once lived...

Thursday night, ready to screen. Try to get the (Christie) center ring out and guess what. The belt got jammed on the mut and created an incredible amount of back tension that the ring was actually compressed closed.

So, down onto 6K's it went. It wasn't until about the last trailer was off did the ring loosen up. So I thought, hmmmmmm, spend another 30 minutes or so spinning the print back on, or .... screen directly off the 6K's and let it build back up on the platter.

Ok, so set the MUT between the platter and the projector to avoid any twisting, go from the bottom mut roller to the top platter roller. From the bottom projector roller through the feet of the mut, carefull of the cross bar of the MUT, and continue to thread the platter regularly.

When it gets close to the end of the reel, changeover time. Worked incredibly well with no damage. I wouldn't do this as habit, but it saved time on a night that was starting late to begin with.

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What I ended up doing was breaking down the print to the end (beginning ) of the wrong reel, splicing it back together the right way and running the rest of the show off a 6,000 foot reel by placing the make-up table between the platter and the projector.

It's something that never should have happened but, none the less, it did. In a situation like that you have to do whatever is necessary to let the show "go on". I would never do something like that unless it was absolutely necessary. Thus, I would classify any method of running a showl like this, other than the prescribed methods, as a last minute, "save-the-show" technique.

In such a situation, I might add that it is well worth taking an extra five minutes to stand back and look at the problem to come up with a logical course of action, rather than responding with some half-assed solution that might cause further interruptions down the road. Customers don't like interruptions like this but when presented with some problem like this they understand that "shit happens". They have a certain tolerance for problems like this and might very well give you a "Mulligan" BUT they are likely to become VERY pissed off if something else happens. It, therefore, becomes necessary to make the "fix" on the first try.
That having been said, it's MUCH better to let people wait for two extra minutes while you get your shit together than to make them wait for a half hour while you run around like a chicken with its head cut off, making one mistake after another.