THSCC Forums

My ChatterBox intercom was shipped Mon., received Tues. and charged up by 10pm. Tried it out and got horrible feedback at only 20% volume. Settings below that aren't loud enough to hear. No amount of shrouding the mikes and speakers and distancing them apart w/ the extension cord even with a door between made a rat's arse difference. Likely the box is bad. OG agreed.

Called OG, and their online guy Steve said he'd take care of it and ship out another unit asap plus the only Student headset they had left in case one of them is the problem. They only had the one headset left since they've apparently gotten an influx of orders from the SE. Hmmmmm...

Anyway, excellent service. Expect to have the replacement by tomorrow or Fri. at the latest.

I am disappointed with the way the Student Headsets work so far, maybe I'll get used to them. Seems the Nady I used was a whole lot easier to slip under the helmet and get the wires out of the way. It also seemed to have a better boom for the mike, CB's doesn't want to retain the position you put it in very well. I may need to get one of you folks to help me out here.

Especially need suggestions as to how to route the coiled wires away from the driver's helmet to avoid getting in the way of their arms. Looks like the extension cord will be needed in any case for the driver's set. I'm thinking the wires may need to be routed out from the back of the helmet. They're set up for left side use, when I'd think most folks would want right side use. You can use them on the right side, but the cord comes out the front and complicates getting it out from under the helmet as noted above. Perhaps that's just me.

Other things I don't like so far: No 'on' light (it would of course suck power, but an LED wouldn't be too bad). No 'finished charging' light on the charger. The DIN connections seem too easy to come loose. No car power adapter if the battery lets you down in the middle of the day. Sure would have preferred using regular 'AA' or 'AAA' NiMh batteries. Headset speaker is thicker than I'd like for comfortable fit inside helmet. Reckon I'll learn to live with it.

Steve

The replacements showed up Thurs. and it turned out to be one of the headsets was bad.

The replacement student headset is different and has a different part number. The replacement has a shorter boom and it's stays where you put it better. The wire, which is thinner, exits the speaker at the bottom near the boom which is nicer. It looks like the one at this site, and all the other sites in the previous thread that showed a pic of the student sets:

http://www.fast44.com/chhjin.html

I tried to get an explanation about the two different versions, such as is one been discontinued in favor of the other, from ChatterBox USA and although the conversation was confusing I think that the one in production at this time has the longer, wimpy boom with wire exiting at 9 o'clock.

In any case, the one with the longer boom, while not very good if just stuffed up in the helmet, does allow me to place it in the ear pocket of my helmet and route the boom under the removable cheek pieces and still reach my mouth. This is better because it doesn't painfully mash my ear like both do when just stuffed in place. Of course I don't know if that'll work volume wise until trying it out on track.

I'll let you all know my impressions after actually using it on track.

Steve