Identify this old Siren

RyanZ71

Member
Jun 14, 2011
1,001
Denver, Colorado
I'll tell you what, I think those Q Sirens sound a heck of a lot better than what the police cars around here have been using since 1993 or so and that's the higher pitched Whelen systems.
 

stuporduck09

Member
Jun 6, 2010
30
Jax Fl
I love that crunchy wail and coast..pure EAR CANDY!!!!Paramedic 4-Life...Gage and Desoto Rule..Jack Web was a God Among Men!!!!!
 

Skip Goulet

Member
Feb 23, 2011
4,241
Midland, TX
Henry455 said:
Not being nit picky but since it is a concealed installation, I bet it was a Model 76 double tone.

aimg.photobucket.com_albums_v691_Henry455_Federal_20Catalog_Federal6.jpg

Thanks for this post, Tim. The San Francisco used the Federal doubletones extensively on their apparatus and command vehicles for many years. Some of their trucks also had Qs and B&Ms. Sometime in the early '80s my volunteer fire dept. in Lubbock managed to get an SFFD 77GB doubletone siren directly at no cost. All we did then was send them a requisition in writing and it was ours. For it to have been used for many years it was in remarkable shape.


I couldn't view the video on this public computer; but one of my favorite Emergency! episodes was on one of their SF trips in which Johnny and Roy went on a run with the Battalion Chief. The car was quite plain-jane: a small Chrysler product (Gran Fury, etc.). The sole warning light was a red spot light and the siren was the underhood 76B doubletone. While most of Emergency's siren sounds were dubbed in, it seems like this particular one was the actual siren. The producers would've had to have gone to great lengths to have been able to dub in that sound. Still worth watching and listening to!
 

Skip Goulet

Member
Feb 23, 2011
4,241
Midland, TX
Another note about the doubletones: we had a rebuilt 77GBD (specially built demountable model [have you seen one, Tim?]) on the '60 Chevy station wagon ambulance operated by our small standby ambulance service in Lubbock. We "inherited" the siren when the local racetrack owner gave us the old wagon following the large tornado that had hit Lubbock in May, 1970. Prior to that we had used the old wagon when working standy for the track, but at that time the old wagon only had a short-skirted Model 17 beacon on top and the siren had been removed. As it turns out, the siren had been rebuilt locally by a local starter/generator shop (that makes Kevin O'Connell cringe when he hears that), so I'm not sure what sort of motor it was; but it was definitely not a siren motor. Because of the slight mismatch we couldn't run the siren with the clutch set to allow the siren to coast properly, and we found that out the hard way. If you ran the siren up, like clearing an intersection, and then allowed it to coast but then had to roll it over again, you could hear the motor winding but it wouldn't engage the rotor. So we ended up tightening the big nut on the clutch all the way down, thus making it basically like a doubletoned-66; but it would wind up and down properly that way.


However, with that motor being a bit ovesized it really made that siren louder than anything you could imagine. One of our guys worked as a projectionist at a move theater at the corner of 50th and Indiana in Lubbock. Indiana was the thoroughfare we used to get to the hospital when we came in from the track. One night he had had to work late and happened to be in the lobby as we were coming up Indiana on a run. There were a lot of kids in the lobby at the moment, and he said that when we peaked the siren it literally rattled the plate glass windows in the theater! And he said that he heard more ooohs and ahhs from those kids then from the action-shots in the movie that had been playing!
 
Jun 4, 2012
34
New England
Skip Goulet said:
Another note about the doubletones: we had a rebuilt 77GBD (specially built demountable model [have you seen one, Tim?]) on the '60 Chevy station wagon ambulance operated by our small standby ambulance service in Lubbock. We "inherited" the siren when the local racetrack owner gave us the old wagon following the large tornado that had hit Lubbock in May, 1970. Prior to that we had used the old wagon when working standy for the track, but at that time the old wagon only had a short-skirted Model 17 beacon on top and the siren had been removed. As it turns out, the siren had been rebuilt locally by a local starter/generator shop (that makes Kevin O'Connell cringe when he hears that), so I'm not sure what sort of motor it was; but it was definitely not a siren motor. Because of the slight mismatch we couldn't run the siren with the clutch set to allow the siren to coast properly, and we found that out the hard way. If you ran the siren up, like clearing an intersection, and then allowed it to coast but then had to roll it over again, you could hear the motor winding but it wouldn't engage the rotor. So we ended up tightening the big nut on the clutch all the way down, thus making it basically like a doubletoned-66; but it would wind up and down properly that way.

However, with that motor being a bit ovesized it really made that siren louder than anything you could imagine. One of our guys worked as a projectionist at a move theater at the corner of 50th and Indiana in Lubbock. Indiana was the thoroughfare we used to get to the hospital when we came in from the track. One night he had had to work late and happened to be in the lobby as we were coming up Indiana on a run. There were a lot of kids in the lobby at the moment, and he said that when we peaked the siren it literally rattled the plate glass windows in the theater! And he said that he heard more ooohs and ahhs from those kids then from the action-shots in the movie that had been playing!

Actually, I read somewhere on this site that the US Secret Service or some other government agency ran a special variant of the 70 Series that was a direct-drive siren like the 60 Series rather than a coaster. Don't know much else about those, though.
 

Henry455

Member
May 21, 2010
513
Houston, TX
Skip Goulet said:
Another note about the doubletones: we had a rebuilt 77GBD (specially built demountable model [have you seen one, Tim?)

Skip, if we are talking about the same thing, a 2 piece demountable base was an option on the C, 70, 60 and EW series sirens. Remove 1 5/16" bolt and the 2 pieces would separate.


aimg.photobucket.com_albums_v691_Henry455_Federal_20C5A_FED2pcbase.jpg
 

Skip Goulet

Member
Feb 23, 2011
4,241
Midland, TX
Night Patrolman said:
Actually, I read somewhere on this site that the US Secret Service or some other government agency ran a special variant of the 70 Series that was a direct-drive siren like the 60 Series rather than a coaster. Don't know much else about those, though.

You are quite right about that. Federal marketed both a special 28 and a special 76 (I don't remember the exact model designation) to fit behind the grille of unmarked units. Due to their unusual shape and smaller motors, the 76 doubletone, as you mention, was a noncoaster. I've seen a few pix of them, and they were strange-looking. Tim, do you have anything about those in your old Federal catalogs??
 

Skip Goulet

Member
Feb 23, 2011
4,241
Midland, TX
Henry455 said:
Skip, if we are talking about the same thing, a 2 piece demountable base was an option on the C, 70, 60 and EW series sirens. Remove 1 5/16" bolt and the 2 pieces would separate.

aimg.photobucket.com_albums_v691_Henry455_Federal_20C5A_FED2pcbase.jpg

What you have here is the standard two-piece bracket that replaced the old two-hole bracket (like on a CP25 speaker) back in the early-to-mid 50s. This special demountable model had the same two-piece bracket, but it had spring-loaded contact on each side of the bracket. Short 4ga. cable ran from the motor to the contact on the part of the base that connected to the bottom of the siren; and the "foot" had the other contact at the top, thus allowing contact between the two, and then a 4 ga cable connected under the foot, and that would run to the solenoid, foot switch, etc. These were special builds; and I'm not sure if you'll see them mentioned in the old Catalog 300. Might be worth a look!
 

Skip Goulet

Member
Feb 23, 2011
4,241
Midland, TX
RyanZ71 said:
Skip- That youtube link above is exactly that episode you were talking about and them in the Admin car. I hope you get a chance to watch it!

Thanks, Ryan. I've seen that episode several times when it's been aired on TV. Thankfully, we just got Emergency! back on METV a couple of months ago; but it comes on at 4 in the afternoon, so I miss them a bit since I'm usually not back home that early. But the San Francisco series of episodes are my favorites; but this one in particular because of the sweet sound of that doubletone. As I said above, I think it's one of the few where they taped the actual sound and just didn't dub it in. There's one episode where they respond to a heart attack at a golf course and the big Cadillac ambulance responds. As the ambulance is leaving with the "patient", they actually let loose on the Super Chief, and that's very, very neat!
 

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