OT: Amateur Theatre.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Ages ago, I made up what I called a bell box for use on a very low budget TV soap which I helped to set up on the technical side. Consisted of a door bell, ding dong and buzzer, all standard units. And also a Maplin electronic door bell with a choice of rings. All in one box and battery powered. Got the idea from BBC TV where they were common in the old days. Dunno about now.

Came across it and thought it would make sense to get it to a good home where it would be used. Amateur dramatics? School plays or whatever?

Anyone know what such a thing was called in the theatre?

[Bill Wright]

Just advertise it with a brief description.

Bill

[TimW]

Even the pantomime uses a laptop and sound files in my village. TW

[Andy Burns]

They probably use a mobile phone with a soundboard/fart app nowadays.

[Adrian Caspersz]

Care home.

[Brian Gaff]

door effects unit. At the Orange tree in Richmond they have one but it also has a small door and latch as well which somehow sounds like a much bigger door. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

No as I say recently seen effects trolleys in mainstream theatres, not everyone has a laptop or tablet to connect to the audio, often as well direction is important, and small units can be operated remotely. Brian

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Can remember seeing those at the BBC too. But a separate device to the one which did doorbells.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

Must admit that using a mobile phone with a wireless link to the hall sound system would be well down my list on how to play in sound FX.

But then I do own a 360 Systems ShortCut which was fairly state of the art when I still did such things.

[charles]

Certainly the radio studios had them. But then along came sound effects records. I built a telephone ringer based on a BBC in-house design. But mine stopped when the handset was lifted. Phone had to be mofified to do that.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

That reminds me. I have a home built ringer too. Which works with any phone which plugs into a standard BT socket. Loosely based on a Maplin design which generates the ring tone electronically. So is happy to run from batteries.

You're right with older phones which were hard wired. Think they had to have the strapping modified to work with the BBC one.