Intercom Talkpack

[swilly]

Hi guys,

 

Can someone give us some advice and guidance on intercom talk packs? We are a community theatre company and are staging a music festival that, hopefully, will be annual event. The venue has a sound+lighting box up in the gods and we would like to be able to communicate between lighting tech. and producer. Normally we don't have this problem as we use the floor when touring.

Am looking at ASL Intercom Talkpack that Thomann are doing at £550.00-is this what we should be looking at?

 

Appreciate any suggestions.

Thanks.

[gareth]

These. Or perhaps these.

[Bobbsy]

Of the two links Gareth provided, I know the Tecpro gear best...it was pretty common in most of the theatres I worked in before leaving the UK. It seemed pretty simple and rugged.

 

One thing I'd suggest is a check with your local hire facility to see what they can rent you. Once you have SOME intercom gear there's some sort of theatrical law that dictates it's never enough...so the ability to hire additional compatible gear should be a major factor in your choice.

 

Bob

[mrg198]

I'd second the tecpro gear. almost standard stuff in all the theatres I've ever worked in and we have some ourselves for corporate stuff too. If you are thinking of going done this route though (i.e. tecpro) - canford who make it are bringing out a new range techpro2 for the same money which includes handy features like mic kill for when someone's left a mic open. The new stuff is compatible with the current range (although some of the new features won't work with the existing stuff like the mic kill). The master stations are available now and the new beltpacks sometime next year I believe.

 

You can usually hire packs and headsets for about £10 + VAT ea/day so for the odd event it may be cheaper to hire in and if the new features are of interest I'd suggest either buying second hand or hiring until the new stuff is available and buy that or buy other people's that decide to upgrade.

 

HTH

[peternewman]

As far as I understand it, the ASL stuff is fully compatible with Techpro (in terms of signal, power and sound), but with the advantage (if you are on a tight budget) that it's cheaper, if a bit less rugged. They do a particularly cheap headset, that won't withstand much abuse, but if you're only using it once a year may be worth looking into. One benefit of the ASL is the BS15, the cheapest beltpack, comes with a very effective siren, which should be audible even in loud environments, although you can turn it down or off if required.

 

On a slight side note, when we got our stuff 10 out of 10 and Thomann seemed to sell it pretty cheaply.

[dbuckley]

ASL has a different line impedance to ClearCom and TecPro, 350R versus 200R, but I would opine that it's close enough that you wont have any problems mixing sets up to a reasonable number of stations. Apparently, as impedance mismatches get worse it's harder to balance sidetone and keep the system stable, but despite mistreating party line intercom systems something rotten with all sorts of addons and bodges, I've never had problems.

[boatman]

Plenty of choice here.

[swilly]

Plenty of choice here.

Thanks

Swilly.