Wailer said:
Now that you mention Smith & Wesson, I really like the early S&W Magnum electronic sirens (early to mid 1970s). The have a deep low-pitched slow rising wail tone just like the late 1960s Federal PA15A and PA20A sirens. My most memorable moment in hearing a S&W Magnum was back in the late 1970s, when I saw a 1975 Superior / Pontiac 54" high top ambo running code 3. The ambo was several blocks away, but the long windup on that siren wail sure jarred my brain and made my heart pound. It was like music to my ears. A S&W Magnum of that vintage is the holy grail to complete my small siren collection.
You're right again, Wailer. Those older Magnum sirens were awesome. I had forgotten about the slow rate they had. Before I left Lubbock I loaned some of my electronic sirens to the volunteer fire department that I had helped organize and had been president of for several years. Included in that "loan" was Magnum III and that nice Sonic that I've mentioned; and if I'm not mistaken, the Vista siren, too. That's been 20 years, so there's no telling where any of those sirens might be nowadays. And it mentioning those "loaners", it also brings to mind one electronic siren that I totally detest, and I don't think I've seen mentioned in this thread, any of the sirens built by Code 3. The Odessa Fire Dept. has some Code 3 sirens on the engines that they got from Pierce. Fortunately, those engines are also equipped with Qs. Those Code 3 sirens have a very scratchy, growly sound on wail, that almost sounds like a cat that got its tail stepped on.
While these sirens were never built for much wattage output, another very slow wailing siren I once saw was one of the early Heathkit GD18 electronic sirens. If you remember, they came in kit form or pre-assembled from Heath. They were rated at only 50 watts output, which was really the only downside about them. One nice feature was a small adjustment on the back that controlled the siren's pitch....where you could adjust from low to medium to high (or anywhere in between). Now the Heathkit siren that I mentioned at the first belonged to a friend many, many years ago who was a volunteer firemen in the small East Texas town in which he lived; but he was a travelling electronics parts salesman. He had the Heathkit siren mounted in his Rambler wagon with the round 50-watt speaker mounted underhood. On one of his visits he just had to show off the GD18. He turned it to wail, and at that time I had never heard such a slow wail rate on any electronic siren before. Now I don't remember if he had bought this siren pre-assembled or if he built the unit himself. I seem to think that he did the build himself, which could easily explain the slow rate. Since he was extremely good at electronics, he could've easily done some substitutions on the capacitors to alter the wail rate. I later bought a GD18 at a Ham radio swapfest, and tried it out on one of my ambulances: a hightop Suburban that had twin Federal CP100 speakers over the cab. This particular Heath siren had a common wail rate: nothing fancy, but I was quite disappointed that the sound output didn't improve when used with the twin 100-watt speakers. It didn't seem to move traffic any better than it would've with the factory-provided 50-watt speaker. I guess that 50 watts is 50 watts: period!
But having said that, I may have mentioned very early in this thread about an ambulance that served the small town of Canyon, TX. Canyon is a small college town about 15 mi. south of Amarillo, and at the time was served by Metropolitan Ambulance Service which was based in Amarillo. They serviced Amarillo, Canyon and Pampa (to the northeast). In 1976 they placed a brand new hightop Dodge van ambulance in Canyon which had been built in Arlington, TX by a company originally called Beck-Rank, Inc., and later known as Prestige Vehicles. The ambulance came equipped with the usual front and rear tunnel lights, with a big red 4-lamp beacon on the hightop. But what was impressive (both in sight and sound) was the
threeFederal CP100 speakers mounted above the cab. They were connected to a PA15A Director. Now, since you have considerable expertise in Federal electronics, Wailer, you know that the Directors were rated at only 54 watts. But I assure you, running that Director off those three 100-watt speakers was mind-blowing (not to mention ear-shattering). The only other unusual combo. like that that would beat that setup came from an older ambulance that we bought from Metropolitan in 1982. It was a Chevy Type II ambulance built by the long-since-defunct Tram Corp. of Tulsa,OK. This neat old van ambulance was the "VistaCruiser" of ambulances, as it had the vista-cruiser panoramic windows built into the hightop. It also had a working sink (quite uncommon even then). The unit came with a pair of CP100 speakers over the cab, attached to a North American pushbutton siren (with the "riot" function). Now this setup was more than adequate. But after we had had this unit for some time, one of my crew chiefs just couldn't be outdone. So he added two more CP100 speakers over the cab (talk about a full roof!) and replaced the N.A. siren with a new Federal PA 200 that could be adjusted for a full 200-watt output. Now talk about loud! 'Nuff said!!