God mic system

[dwj0772]

Does anyone have any suggestions on where to look to purchase a onstage/backstage intercom system?  I'm the stage manager for a community theatre group, and we are looking into grant money, and I was asked to create a wish list.  One of the things I want is a god mic, but I have to be able to tell them exactly what I want, how much it costs, etc. and I'm not sure where to start.

[LisaEllis]

Are you thinking about backstage (dressing room) paging capability, as well as front of house announcements?

They are usually 2 different systems, in the theatres I've been in, and can vary widely.  Backstage systems usually have speakers in each dressing room and the hallway areas, with a mic of some sort at the SM console.  Sometimes this is built into a com system (like Clear Com or Telex), so you use your headset mic to make the pages.  (Somebody makes wireless belt packs with a paging button...although I've only seen that once).  Sometimes it's a seperate mic.  If you have speakers existing for program feed, I would bet tying into that isn't too tough, but if you don't have any infrastructure, it will need alot of work.

For front of house (like cell phone, or emergency announcements) I have usually had a stand alone mic that is run to the regular house speakers.

I can't tell you specifically about suppliers, but your local lighting/sound/theatrical supply company can probably help you with equipment pricing.

Good luck!

[Mac Calder]

Most cans systems with a "Master Station" - as opposed to those that just have a power pack (single channel, cheap jobbies) will have a PA circuit which can go straight into a PA amplifier input, or into the sound desk - so using existing PA infrastructure, or be plugged into your shows sound system.

The most common way to wire up a cans system to provide front and back stage paging is to dedicate one circuit to Backstage paging, one circuit to all of the crew and one to the biobox/booth (ie the booth has two circuits, one for coms between booth and SM and one for all crew). If you have a PA circuit, that is taken to the in house PA or to the sound desk, and that's that. If you do not have a PA circuit, you can get interface boxes for Canford and Techpro systems that give a HiZ output (which can be jacked into any desk or PA)

The drawback of the dedicated circuit for FOH Paging is that it is no longer Push To Talk - so you have to remember to de-select the circuit before continuing.