Techmoan’s “Fire Alarm tape Cartrette” Video

I saw this on YouTube. It appears that someone sent him some fire alarm tape recording equipment. I think it is from a Simplex 2001 Voice Evac system.

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Very interesting indeed! I know MrTrueAlert once did a demonstration of the two messages on his 2120, & that FireAlarmTech7 uploaded a fairly high-quality version of the 2001/2120 emergency evacuation/fire alarm message on his channel some years back, but thanks to Techmoan we now have both the drill & evacuation/fire alarm messages in very high-quality! (with the exception of the slight background noise you get from a tape but that can easily be removed with some work & hopefully no “damage” to the actual voice portions) Glad he took the time to digitize them: should help them live on given cassette tapes don’t last forever (especially given how many of them came apart as he was trying to play them).

Was just about to make a post about this!

I actually own one of these players and cartridges! I got it at the height of covid lockdown and intended to make a video of my own, but after discovering it didn’t work and wasn’t easily repairable (and I didn’t yet know about respooling old tape into new cartridges), my attention went elsewhere. Now I have no excuse not to dig it up and see if I can’t extract the audio contents!

Oh definitely Nick, especially if they happen to have messages other than the default ones on them! Best of luck if you do decide to try! (just be careful: wouldn’t want the tapes being irreparably damaged)

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This just popped up in my YouTube feed and it’s very cool. I really want one of these things to see if I could get it working… That said, as mentioned by @TheCarson116, these are by far the highest quality recordings of that message I’ve ever heard. Yes, there’s some grain, but I actually kind of like the sound of it. Can be removed for sure, but I think it sounds pretty good regardless.

Alright! I grabbed the audio clips from the video and did my best to reduce noise. I’m not an audio expert by any means but I think it sounds pretty alright. Give it a listen!

Drill Message

Attention Message

Welp, I did the whole Techmoan respool-onto-another-cassette thing, and… it’s the exact same message. I was hoping it would be the message from this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4h8lx0Ql_8Y, which several comments claim is a Simplex system, but it was not to be.

Anyway, just to prove I did it: https://nickpiegari.com/misc/firealarmmessages/simplex%20tape.mp3

How disappointing, but oh well I guess. It seems like most 2001/2120 systems only have those two messages by default (though there might be some systems with custom-recorded messages just the same: the odds of finding one of those & saving it however are likely very low).

According to a friend of mine that could possibly be a Cerberus Pyrotronics system (no confirmation at the moment that that’s what it is though). That same message & tone are also heard in this video:
FIRE ALARM Goes Off During SURGERY! Open House 2017 (youtube.com)

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Just made a new thread on the topic of that mysterious “111” system!