What are these and how do I make them work?

shaggy9531

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I recently acquired what seem to be 2 lights that may blink or dance to music and I cant find anything on line about them. They are aprox. 4' high with florescent light cover and 4 knobs power on/off, frequency, bass, and treble. It says it was made by "Curtis Electro" and the only other words on it say: "Frequency Controls Solid State" any information on what these are and how to make them work is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
 

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What’s the back look like?
 
It's a classic "color organ", very popular in the late 60's and into the 70's. It simply divided the sound into several frequency bands, frequently 3 or 4 and each band was fed to electronics that powered a string of colored light bulbs, a different color for each band. I remember that Popular Electronics magazine had plans for one a couple of times.
 
Yep, power them up. Plug a line level signal, like a preamp out, from the the source, usually an RCA on the back or a 1/4" T/S. Some had mics built in. You can replace the lens, but I'll have to look up the right product... Can't remember what it's called.
 
For replacing the plastic sheet, check out the lighting section at your local big box building supply store. It's the diffuser for troffer lights.

EDIT: Oh if someone wants a color organ of their very own, I ran across this kit:
Light Organ - Color Organ - 5 Channel [XLO-5] – Xkitz Electronics
They also have a nifty control panel option. The only thing that is rather iffy, it says 700 watts per channel, and there are 5 channels BUT there is no way that can handle 3500 watts.

EDIT: In that link the MORE tab can take you to documentation and the instruction book is available as a pdf file. The instructions are quite good with lots of info.
 
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For replacing the plastic sheet, check out the lighting section at your local big box building supply store. It's the diffuser for troffer lights.

EDIT: Oh if someone wants a color organ of their very own, I ran across this kit:
Light Organ - Color Organ - 5 Channel [XLO-5] – Xkitz Electronics
They also have a nifty control panel option. The only thing that is rather iffy, it says 700 watts per channel, and their are 5 channels BUT there is no way that can handle 3500 watts.

Sure, John. Those are "internet Watts." Corollary is "AOL inches." Apparently both involve a poor understanding of measurements.
 
I recently acquired what seem to be 2 lights that may blink or dance to music and I cant find anything on line about them. They are aprox. 4' high with florescent light cover and 4 knobs power on/off, frequency, bass, and treble. It says it was made by "Curtis Electro" and the only other words on it say: "Frequency Controls Solid State" any information on what these are and how to make them work is greatly appreciated. Thank you.
As others have said, it's a "color organ." Back in the 1960's and 1970s the type you have were consumer or pro-sumer items, most likely.

The secret sauce - these work by using band pass filters on the audio input, the filter outputs are rectified to a control voltage that runs the dimmers for each "channel" of color. Each channel has a filter.

With the age of the unit you have I think inspecting all the electrolytic capacitors would be a good idea before putting power to it; look for bulges, leaks, discoloration. Check the resistors for signs of overheating (scorched PC board, discolored resistor package). Without a picture of the back, I'm guessing it has an RCA jack for signal input, you can probably cobble together a cable and drive it from anything with a headphone jack for test purposes.
 

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