Dressing room feed amp

[ColdFusion13]

Hey all,

Needing to pick your brains about a sound again. We have an old Dukane solid state 15 watt amp with push to talk mic that we use for our dressing room feed and announcements. It has, at no surprise to anyone here, died of old age. We are wanting something similar to that to replace it with. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[themuzicman]

As much as people may give me trouble for it, the Toa 900 series stuff is routinely put on both Broadway and touring shows for use in backstage program/paging. The mainframes look to range from about $100-$500 on Amazon, and you buy input cards to fill it out depending on your needs. I'm sure there are better fits for your needs, but in my experience the Toa holds up just fine for the price...it does what you expect it to do and not too much more.

Side question: You wouldn't happen to be the TD at the Perot?

 

[rochem]

I second the Toa. I've put them in a number of theatres (as installs) and systems (as tours), and never had an issue with them. For musicals, it usually gets set up with inputs for Band, Vocals, God mics, SM Page, and Radio Page - the last one being a radio plugged directly into the Toa so that the SM can page the dressing rooms from wherever she happens to be. For an install system, it's probably more than adequate to have a room mic and SM page, then maybe add from there for things like SFX or Gods or radio page. The Toa system is also really nice in that you can set it up such that, for example, when signal comes into the Page input, it will duck the other inputs so that you can hear the page over the program signal.

 

[museav]

Do you happen to know the model for the Dukane amp and the microphone, how the speakers are wired, what the speakers are, etc.? Most of the TOA 900 products will support 4 Ohm, 8 Ohm, 25V and 70V outputs but it would be important to make sure you use the correct output for your system, which might be a constant voltage system but could also be a series-parallel system.

 

[ColdFusion13]

Here are some pics of the Dukane amp, push to talk mic, and speakers. The model number for the Dukane amp is 1A718. As you can tell by the picture of the microphone it is GC electronics. There are a total of 8 speakers. Not completely sure how they are wired. The ohms on the speakers is 10 ohms.



themuzicman side answer: Yes, I am the TD at the Perot.

 

[Aman121]

Is just getting the amp repaired not an option? Seems to me like it would be the quickest way for you to get back in business without having to change equipment and rewire things.

When you refer to the speaker resistance as "10 ohms", are you referring to a marked impedance rating on the speaker drivers themselves, a dc resistance measurement of the individual speakers, a resistance measurement on the speaker lines connected to the amp output taps, or something else entirely? What output taps were the speakers connected to?

Knowing the answers to these questions will help us find you a suitable replacement amp, and also potentially help us diagnose what caused the failure in the first place- if the speakers weren't wired to the correct output taps the resulting impedance mismatch could have been the reason for the amp's failure.

 

[ColdFusion13]

Our feelings are that with the age of the Dukane amp and that fact that they are no longer made, that it would easier to replace it. Now, bare with my small knowledge or sound and ohm ratings, but when I say 10 ohms I mean that, that is what the voltage meter read after touching the leads to the wires leading to the speakers.