Terror Tone

Haunt Master Products sells an interesting product called "Terror Tone". It is a CD (earlier versions were on cassette tape) that contains a special blend of subsonic an audiable low-frequency sounds intended to make you feel creepy.

We decided to use Terror Tone in our graveyard this year.

Equipment Required
Powered Subwoofer
Some means of turning it on and off
Assembly

Equipment Required

A Terror Tone setup requires the following:

the Terror Tone CD
We ordered this from Haunt Master Products. You might attempt to devise this on your own, but their disk is inexpensive.
Their original Terror Tone was on cassette tape; it might still be for sale. We actually thought that the CD would provide better fidelity and last longer.
CD player
Several of our props have their own CD sound track. We use cheesie cheap portable CD players, $20 on sale at Fry's Electronics
amplifier
The Terror Tone must be loud; the louder the better.
low-frequency speakers
The amplified low-frequency signals must be converted to sounds by a speaker. It must be capable of handling the necessary power, as well as low frequencies.
some means of turning it on and off
The instructions for use of the Terror Tone suggest that it not be left on all the time. Instead, it is recommended for occasional use only when you need to hit somebody.

Powered Subwoofer

Instead of individual amplifier and speakers, we used a self-powered subwoofer. We did so because it provided an integrated solution, designed for the transmission of low frequency sounds. It was also fairly inexpensive, $50 on sale at Fry's Electronics, rated at 100 Watts.

Vanna White shows the prize in store for unsuspecting Trick-Or-Treaters.

Some means of turning it on and off

Since the instructions for Terror Tone said that best results came from occasional use, we first tried the obvious thing:

set the CD player for repeat play

plug the "line output" of the CD player straight into the powered subwoofer

turn the subwoofer power on and off with an X-10 appliance module

Unfortunately, the powered subwoofer has an unpleasant characteristic shared by a lot of similar units: when you turn on the power, it makes a loud "thump" sound. This meant that the subwoofer power must stay on at all times.

This left us the choices of hacking into the CD player to teach it to be controlled via X10, or switch the signal going between the CD player and the powered subwoofer.

We elected to build a remote volume control.

Assembly

Once you have the pieces, putting it all together is easy:

plug the line-out of the CD player into the powered subwoofer, using the remote volume control cable
plug the lamp for the remote volume control into an X10 lamp module, and into power
give power to the CD player
give power to the powered subwoofer
set the CD player for infinite repeat; hit play
turn on the volume control lamp
adjust the volume setting on the powered subwoofer for the loudest volume you would want
use the X10 controller to dim the lamp; the Terror Tone sounds should go down
use the X10 controller to brightenthe lamp; the Terror Tone sounds should go back up

Thank you for visiting. Your comments are welcome.
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