Ultimate Siren demo thread

Skip Goulet

Member
Feb 23, 2011
4,241
Midland, TX
Haven't seen one of the Mag. IIIs in years! They were awesome for their time. A division of S&W known as Sonic Signal Co. in NJ marketed a very nice siren under that name. It was quite plain-jane, as it only had siren sounds: no PA or radio. But it had a nice deep-throated sound and a decent roll down, and the hi-lo would rattle your brain!
 

Wailer

Member
May 24, 2010
2,290
Canada
Wheels said:
]And here is an old Smith & Wesson Magnum III that I acquired recently.

That is the holy grail I'm searching for. An early Magnum III with the large pushbuttons like you have would round out my small siren collection quite nicely. I love that slow rising wail tone and that slow 'wah wah wah' yelp. My guess is that the siren is early to mid 1970s vintage.


I first heard this siren back in 1978 when I was still in high school and I was heading home for lunch. I heard the slow rising wail tone off in the distance, and when I heard the yelp I saw a 1975 Superior/Pontiac 54" high headroom ambulance go through a lighted intersection about four blocks away. The ambo had a Magnum III and a Federal Twin Sonic light bar. It was used as an emergency transfer unit to transport patients between city's three hospitals.


Except for the slower yelp, the early Smith & Wesson Magnum sirens sound very close to the late 1960s Federal Director and Interceptor sirens.
 

Skip Goulet

Member
Feb 23, 2011
4,241
Midland, TX
Wheels said:
Here is an older SVP SA-441 Magnum that I purchased from 9C1PHANTOM a month ago. This is one of my top 3 favorite sirens.


The old S/W Magnums were neat sirens. I had a couple of the Mag. IIIs when I was president of our VFD years ago. As I've noted before, I made the mistake of loaning out some of my sirens to our vollies, never to see them again. This happened to one of my Mag IIIs!


One of the best sirens made by a division of S/W was the Sonic Siren, built by Sonic Signals. I'm sure I've mentioned it, but I acquired a Sonic recently via this board.
 

ford-dealer

Member
Sep 2, 2010
857
San Antonio
Very nice Henry! Very nice indeed! :yes:
 

Skip Goulet

Member
Feb 23, 2011
4,241
Midland, TX
Henry455 said:

Nice unit, Tim. I had one of these many years ago, and it sounded terrible. Couldn't wait to get rid of it! But this one sounds decent, and I like the fast wail. The original pushbutton SiTron had a fast wail, too.
 

Skip Goulet

Member
Feb 23, 2011
4,241
Midland, TX
Henry455 said:

Very nice! I have a pair of SI75Ms, and the wail on them is a bit slower. In 1982 my standby ambulance serviced bought a '72 hightop Chevy van ambulance that came with an SI100M on it. I moved it over to my lowtop Suburban and put a PA200 in the van. The first time I got to use the "riot" tone on the North American was at a Sunday afternoon motorcycle race. I had preset the buttons for riot and have left the amplifier turned off. We had a rider fall, so I turned on the siren as I was entering the track, adn then let loose on the rooftop Q! That was quite effective. After the races one of the track owners wanted to know what the "funny" sound was! He was a Lubbock fireman and said that was the most effective siren tone he'd ever heard.
 
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Henry455

Member
May 21, 2010
513
Houston, TX
Skip, not sure when it was first introduced but here is a GE Powercall Brochure dated March, 1977. Powercall Brochure


EDIT: Skip looks like you are correct, the GE Powercall siren was introduced with the new GE Master Progress line of land mobile radios in 1964.
 
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Skip Goulet

Member
Feb 23, 2011
4,241
Midland, TX
Henry455 said:
Skip, not sure when it was first introduced but here is a GE Powercall Brochure dated March, 1977. Powercall Brochure

EDIT: Skip looks like you are correct, the GE Powercall siren was introduced with the new GE Master Progress line of land mobile radios in 1964.

Thanks, Tim. I thought that I'd seen them advertised in the '60s; but the first ones I saw in operation were c.1974. The City of Brownfiled (SW of Lubbock) had one on their 1974 Dodge MediCruiser ambulance; but let me correct myself, the funeral home's last ambulance was a '67 Ford wagon, and it, too, had a Powercall.
 

Wailer

Member
May 24, 2010
2,290
Canada
canonninja said:
I grew up in a shitty part of Houston back in the 80s, and I actually miss the old Houston trucks and buses with these tones. Hell, I'd still run a siren like this today, if it wasnt a fire hazard.

It sounds like the Federal Director and Interceptor sirens from the early to mid-1960s (PA15 and PA20).
 

canonninja

Member
Aug 27, 2013
141
Houston, Tx
Wailer said:
It sounds like the Federal Director and Interceptor sirens from the early to mid-1960s (PA15 and PA20).


I can almost guarantee it was one of these in those old trucks. But yeah, the wail especially has that old 60s sound.

 

Skip Goulet

Member
Feb 23, 2011
4,241
Midland, TX
I agree with you, Tim. Does sound like the old Federals. We bought a pair of Smith and Wesson remote sirens similar to these, and they sounded just like an Interceptor or Director. If these weren't built by Whelen or S/W, I'd bet that they were built by Carson. The older Whelen shown above sounded like a Carson, because they were built by Carson initially. Carson built for Whelen and SVP for a good long while. We had an SVP SA500 which was their last Carson-build. This was in 2002, after SVP had been bought out by Star. That SA500 went down on us in the middle of a Code 3 run. It was a brand new siren, so Star/SVP warranted it and replaced it with a new SA700, which was one of the first built by Star themselves, and it was awesome! It had a new "Alert" sound that was generated by putting the selector on "Alert" and pushing the manual button. It produced an upward-whooping-sound.
 

cook2890

Member
Sep 27, 2010
456
Murfreesboro TN

Not my video.


I know that these can be programmed, but I haven't seen a good demo of the dual tone capabilities. Just wanted to add this one I found since there wasn't one here.
 

Pimp

Member
May 16, 2010
1,872
Louisiana
I cleaned up the original post best I could. It was from the last format of the board. Apparently the new board only allows 10 embedded Youtube videos per post. Will have to settle for hyper links for the rest of them in my original post.
 

rwo978

Member
May 21, 2010
5,196
ND, USA
That's a System9000 siren. It'll mate with most remote mount /\/\ mobiles. Additional tones are hi-lo and airhorn, they just need to be programmed into the DEK box. There's one in my assigned PD squad mated with an Astro P25 mobile.
 
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Jan 17, 2013
31
NY
Hey guys, 

Check out my siren demos

I had a PA300 one up but took it down, might do another one later,

Currently have a demo of a Smart Siren: 


I haven't done any demos in a while since I was waiting to get a better place to do them other than my room, Got a nice quite closet in the basement to do them now with controlled volume so I will start again.

~ Raf
 
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