When I arrived at the
current theatre I volunteer at, I was asked if I could fix some of their I-coms as they need 13 for the next show. I went digging around the
theatre in all of the unorganized shelves and found almost 30 beltpacks of various manufactures and models. After two solid days of repair work, I had them all working. Over the last 4 years, they have to be repaired frequently. Being
community theatre, and trying to go cheap, many of the units were given from professional theatres looking to upgrade and use as tax write-offs. We have clearcoms of three different models and
Telex of two different models and
Production intercom 10 units and several R-Columbia. Of all of these, the
Production Intercom is the best built with the least repairs. That is refering to the beltpacks. When it comes to the headsets, that is a different question all together. The best headsets hands down, are the Beyers. They are great for a professional crew who will take care of them. They are also the most expensive by far, and can't take the abuse of schools and
community theatre. The Production headsets are the most comfortable and the least expensive, but the
connector and the cable are absolute crap. You can replace both and make them a great
headset, but you will have to have extraordinary soldering and
hand skills to do so. Our answer, was to modify the Production beltpacks to accept an electret mic, Put on a miniXLR
connector ans use the inexpensive headsets that are meant for computer use. They are very comfortable and we have
purchase them for $1 piece in quantities of 10. The connectors for them are $7. We assign one to each crew member for the run of the show and if they break it, they have to come begging to me to get a replacement. It doesn't cost them anything except a lecture from me, a real Harda##.
I believe that you can get beltpacks from
Production Intercom that work with electret mics. If so and you have somebody who can solder and understands enough about i-coms, you could buy the beltpacks and
purchase the really cheap computer
headset and put on the appropriate
connector.
The even cheaper approach is to
build a
power supply with a 600
ohm output and use
headset telephones. I have done that in the past and it works great. I don't know where my schematic for the
power supply is, but some google searching sould turn up something from one of the electronic experimenter sites. JUst look for telephone
power supply. WOW! that got to be a little too wordy, SORRY.