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Evolution of the BDS


Glen Trew

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I was going through some old boxes in the storage loft (you wouldn't believe all the stuff up there) and found all of the versions of the BDS dating as far back as 1995, when the name "BDS" was first used with Remote Audio's first product. So, I mounted them alongside the current version for a "family tree" photo.

 

Another bit of historical trivia: "BDS" has always been the trademark of this Remote Audio product, even though it's flattering that people use the name like Jello.

 

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I was one of the many who didn't know that name "BDS" was first used by Remote Audio for their Battery Distribution System. By the time I even started looking into these things there were several on the market and we all referred to them as BDS. It's true (Trew?) that the term has become generic and commonplace, like Jello or Kleenex.

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About the same time, Vark Audio (through their "MacAurther Group" had a similar box they dubbed "PDQ", which I always assumed stood for "power damn quick". It had a circuit board in an extruded casing, using TA-4 female outlets and an optional 9V outlet. Pretty cool box. Similar uses but very different designs.

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About the same time, Vark Audio (through their "MacAurther Group" had a similar box they dubbed "PDQ", which I always assumed stood for "power damn quick". It had a circuit board in an extruded casing, using TA-4 female outlets and an optional 9V outlet. Pretty cool box. Similar uses but very different designs.

And here you go....

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Glen

I have the raspberry BDS, the light blue one, the dark blue one and the black one. Do I have the complete set ?

 

Hi Al,

 

Sounds like you might be missing the hammer tone green one and either the newest color scheme (satin black w/orange screen) or an original with gloss powder coat black. If you'd caught me last week I could have given you an original before it made that familiar sound as it hit the dumpster.

 

Maybe we should have a "pick-through day" at the Nashville attic. Lot's of stories up there.

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Congrats on coming up with a great product that became universally accepted and really made bag rigs much easier to set up and have work reliably under real world/doco etc conditions!  

 

philp

Hi Phil,

 

I'll take credit for building those very early ones, and for being involved with the refinements, but the early ones were mostly done in conjunction with custom requests by customers. Before 1995, they were all done one at a time per customers' specs.

 

Here's something that might be interesting...

 

Around that time (1995) there were quite a few FP32a mixers mixers that were damaged (burned traces) when using a single-source power system like the BDS. It was assumed by some who were making these systems (Peter Engh, I believe) that it was because of the voltage differential of some power supplies dissipating through common grounds, and did not want the liability of frying other people's equipment, so stopped making them. This didn't make sense to me because there was so little current available in the voltage differential.  As it turns out, the damage was being cause by using FP32 power cables to feed FP32a mixers with a power supply common to other devices in the bag. The FP32 power input was wired specifically for the Sony BP90 battery (center pin wired negative). The FP32a had steering diodes at the power input so it could take either polarity, but had the power input ring connected to audio ground. So, even though the FP32a would work fine with the reverse polarity FP32 cable, it would create a dead power short when other equipment was using its common power source.  The answer was simple: Have a power cable (red) for FP32 mixers with the center pin negative, and the FP32a and FP33 would use what would become the normal wiring scheme.

 

gt

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