Intercom help

justonemore

justonemore

Active Member
OK guys. I need to pick at your brains for a bit. I am currently at my mother-in-laws home in Sarasota, FL for the week. Leaving Saturday morning.

Anyways. They currently have a very SWEET whole house intercom setup. Front door, all rooms, cassette, radio, etc.....

Their only complaint with the system is that it doesn't have a CD player.
The unit is a NuTone Music Intercom setup IMA-4006 Series. I really don't want to pull the unit apart for fear I'll run into a brick wall and ruin my entire vacation setting it up! :D

They inquired about replacing the unit (don't know with whom) and there were told it would run about 2500 bucks. Don't know what all that entailed either. Either way that seems ludicrous!

I'm gonna start researching the unit on the web to see what I can find out. In the meantime, if anyone is familiar with this type of system, your assistance would be greatly appreciated.

BTW. I got involved in this project because MY WIFE said to them before we came down:" Oh yeah mom, Bill knows all about that kind of stuff" :) Guess she figured it would keep me sober on vacation or something B)
 
Any chance you can just add a CD player to the setup they already have or are you looking at something like E just mentioned and have to set the whole thing up from scratch?
 
I'm pretty sure you've already checked this, but sometimes we all overlook the obvious solution. Does it have a line in on it anywhere? If it does are they all being used, or is the thing an "all in one" deal?

If there are no line-ins, worst case scenerio, you can use one of those car adapters... you know, the one where you plug a cassette looking thing to the line-out on your discman, and then drop the cassette-looking thing into the cassette player. You could hook a CD player (any kind you want) to one of these cassette adapter things using a a RCA stereo to female, mini-stereo headphone adapter.

Of course, if this thing is remote controlled by panels around the house, neither of these are very practical solutions. And looking at the pics of these things I've just found on the web, the solution above don't look to be very elegant solutions!

So let's do some more searching...

This site: http://www.nutoneintercom.com/im4406.htm#im4406 has a Nutone IM-4406 for $695 for the base station, if the new base station is compatible with their existing wiring/controls, then this is much cheaper than $2500 and may be a drop-in solution... And then maybe they can ebay the old base station!

Of course if they have to buy all those expansion boards and controllers and such, that's another story!
 
I have come to the conclusion that they will need a new base station. I too found the new station with the CD player that is completely compatible with all tghe remote equip already in place.

What really bugs the S#I% out of me is that there is a PHONO button on the base station, but I see absolutely no inputs, at least on the face, possible on the backside which is enclosed with the wall.

I've decided that the best I can do , with the alloted time, is to procure a local dealer, select the correct equip for them, and have it installed.

I'm good, but not good enough to poop gold eggs :)

Thanks for all the help guys!
 
Micah - I would love to just be able to ADD the CD capabilities, just doesn't look feasible.

jrfuda - I actually thought of the old days when I couldn't afford a cd player in the car and used the cassette adapter. BUT..........This DEFINATELY would not fit into the current decor.

If this was my house ( and time prevailed) I would pull the unit off the wall and solder my own line-in somewhere. :) Not gonna happen here though.

Think my above solution is gonna work best here.
 
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