Talk back kill switch question.

J

John O'Brien

Sophomore
Mar 2, 2011
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Behind a bush.
www.johnheywarddesigns.com
Hey folks!

One of the bands I run monitors for, uses these to turn their talk backs on and off. Not a bad product, but they don't have a on/off light. Of course I'm consistently telling them to turn them off when they use them, but of course they consistently forget. When we route them in to our 1D's, we have ducking turned on for when they are speaking in to the talkbacks. This is sent to my ears as MONS, and to the video crew. So, it gets annoying when all of a sudden my ears are turned down -12 dB because the TB was left on.

Does anyone know if there are kill-switches like this that have on/off lights built in to them? I'm sure I could take the ones we have apart and add in a light, but that would require a power source and more know how about circuitry than I currently have. Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated!
 
Re: Talk back kill switch question.

John O'brien said:
Hey folks!

One of the bands I run monitors for, uses these to turn their talk backs on and off. Not a bad product, but they don't have a on/off light. Of course I'm consistently telling them to turn them off when they use them, but of course they consistently forget. When we route them in to our 1D's, we have ducking turned on for when they are speaking in to the talkbacks. This is sent to my ears as MONS, and to the video crew. So, it gets annoying when all of a sudden my ears are turned down -12 dB because the TB was left on.

Does anyone know if there are kill-switches like this that have on/off lights built in to them? I'm sure I could take the ones we have apart and add in a light, but that would require a power source and more know how about circuitry than I currently have. Any suggestions or ideas would be greatly appreciated!
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Hello John,

This same subject came up in the Prosoundweb about two years ago. I'm sure you'll find the discussion if you do a search there (does the search still work?) Anyway...there were some simple schematics that some Forum users submitted (I think I posted a couple...) ...we powered the addition to the circuit from the phantom power of the console/board.

If you can't find it...repost here.

Hammer
 
Re: Talk back kill switch question.

After posting this earlier, I was kind of bugged at myself for not allowing myself to be open minded and try to learn something out of this. The idea to use phantom power hit me not too long after I wrote this.

I went over to the old forums and tried searching as many different terms as I could, but nothing came up. If anyone knows where on the old forums this would be located, that would be great. Or any other resource online about circuitry that I could learn from would be helpful too. I found the Panic Button by Pro Co, but I guess 300 bucks for two is just dumb to me, when I now feel like adding a light. Especially since it's probably a much cheaper alternative.
 
Re: Talk back kill switch question.

Getting a light to work should be extremely simple. All you need is an LED on the mic side of the switch that will operate off of phantom power. If the mic gets switched off, the light should be off too. It's best to pull power from both legs of the phantom source either with 2 LEDs, or appropriate circuitry. Limit the LED current to 5 mA and you will be fine.

Also realize that not all boards deliver a full 48V for phantom, so the brightness of the light may vary. If this is a problem, you can use an external power supply, or batteries inside the switch, which would last a decade or so. You then need a circuit that detects phantom voltage to turn on the light. That's a little more work, but then doesn't draw current from the phantom supply.
 
Re: Talk back kill switch question.

Jay Barracato said:
John,

How about an optical gate on the talkback mic?

http://www.sabine.com/sabine-professional-audio/phantom-main.htm

Since the gate is controlled by the proximity of the speaker, you don't have to worry about stage volume triggering it.
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I love that concept, it was new to me. While it would work for our guitar player that uses a TB, it wouldn't work for they keys player as his TB sits about a foot to his right, and his vocal mic right in front of him. The radius is 3 feet at lowest from what I could understand.


Here's where I've landed with all of this. I'm liking the concept of the push-to-talk idea and would love to implement it.

My new question is, is it possible to take a latching switch(on/off) and turn it in to a momentary switch?
 
Re: Talk back kill switch question.

The Linemaster switches are popular in our line of work. http://www.linemaster.com/Industrial/Footswitch.aspx?catNo=ClipperSingle. We have a 10 mic talkback stem that interfaces with our intercom so anyone with the "music" channel can talk on the stem. Typically it's only the calling SM from the com. The MD/conductor has a latching as he has to do some repetitive calls as the music cues are called in concert with the call SM. The others that use a foot switch are momentary. The FOH and MON positions use switch boxes with state indicators that we make. We don't use phantom, but use an external 9vdc psu to power the lights for state for those that require state indicators. We don't duck either, we turn the stem up over the music. Some nights the stem as entertaining as the show.
 
Re: Talk back kill switch question.

John O'Brien said:
HA! My favorite part of this business is being able to crack jokes behind the scenes that only the crew know about. Well, ok, that's one favorite part.
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while that IS fun. I've seen and heard of more people fired over com jokes than almost anything else ;)

like the guy who commented on the piece of ass on stage, only to find out that the piece of ass's father was on com?

Classic moments..

Jason
 
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