Anyone ever heard of an Audio Associates M5-2 Booth Monitor

[Devin McNamara]

Picked up this booth monitor amongst a bunch of other scrapped cinema equipment. So I placed it on my table and powered it up. Could barely get sound to come out of its speaker. I cleaned the volume potentiometer and the channel selector switches and now it works great. There is absolutely nothing on the internet about this monitor. Do any of you guys have one in your sound rack setup? Are they reliable? This looks like it has to have been made in the mid to late seventies.

[John Eickhof]

it resembles the ones used in TOI theatres and carmikes in Montana, they were basically "home made" and were not much more than a breadboard type construction, I doubt you will ever find any info or parts, there are always several used USL and component engineering monitors for sale on epay, if you want something thats reliable get on of those....

[Randy Stankey]

Nice fuse!

I'd put a real one in there if I was you!
Even if it's only for your collection, I'd pull that bolt out of there in case some doofus decides to plug it in.

If you don't, it's likely that you'll either blow the thing up or start a fire.

[Devin McNamara]

I actually put that there. I tested all the components on the power supply portion of the board and did not find any faults. I am going to find a replacement fuse holder to replace the current one with as I am missing the twist in cap for this one. The unit actually powered on after this but I all I could get was some pops out of the speaker fiddling with it. I cleaned the pot and switches and now it works. I pulled it from the trash at one of our sister theaters and wanted to keep it for myself as it looks cool. It appears to be a Buss brand fuse holder, I wonder if I could just order the cap. I am an electronics technician so I’m pretty familiar with the internals of stuff like this. Pretty neat so see things like this

[John Eickhof]

typically, a monitor will accept line level inputs from processor outputs, and high level amp inputs from power amplifier speaker lines, not sure how the terminal strip is labeled, generally 1/4 to 1/2v balanced or unbalanced processor line and the amps are a buffered 8-16 ohm line The fuse holder is a standard 3AG panel type ($1.50 or so) available from any decent hardware store or radio shop, I would fuse at NO MORE than 1.5 amp 3AG fuse. good luck...

[Randy Stankey]

Back in the day, I had a SPECO platter blow up because somebody had the bright idea to wrap a blown fuse in aluminum cue tape.

It took half a day to replace the selector switch bank and get it working again.

Since then, I get triggered whenever I see somebody cheating a fuse like that.

[John Eickhof]

yup Randy, nothin like a 1000 amp fuse for a 1 amp circuit! I often asked George and Gene Higginbotham why they used such a close rated step down transformer in the speco platters that would invariable fry if you had two discs set in the same mode or if their little bridge rectifriar would short out.... another 5% capacity would have saved a lot of emergency calls! I used to install a slightly larger transformer and a 10A bridge, never had a failure! I sold lots of specos through the years and ran them in my theatre for 20 years....

[Devin McNamara]

Tracking down a fuse holder at work from some junk machinery. It’s funny that you mention Component Engineering as well. That was another booth monitor I found there as well. That one works good too after I cleaned its potentiometer. That one was a lot harder to clean. Had to remove the board and desolder it from the board and if that wasn’t hard enough then I had to carefully drill the ends of the rivets out to split the thing apart. Once I was done, thankfully the rivets and back plate were copper, I was able to solder it back together. Worked and hopefully works for a long time. Was also fun cleaning what was left of the foam speaker muffler off of it. Made quite a mess as pieces of it would crumble off every time I moved it. Ha ha!

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Sheesh! That's nasty and t looks like it may be wired with solid wire too. I never ran into one of those, but I have run into a lot of Louis Bornwasser's booth monitors and they are actually pretty nice. Can't remember for sure wich, but he used either an 8 or a 10 inch speaker in them...

[Devin McNamara]

It’s actually really thin jacketed strand wire. Probably 20 gauge or so. I tried not to fiddle with the wires too much. I was actually surprised, it uses the same JBL industrial series speaker that is found in the MS-100 by Component Engineering.

[Devin McNamara]

Well I’d say it is successful. It is working. My paint job is not the best but I suppose I’ll try for touch up later on. I’m just surprised I got the mint blue as close as I could. Pretty sure this has to be from the seventies. It’s cool though.