Curious about that ECM-53 next to Allen.
I believe, from earlier posts/educated guesses, the early solution to the noise problem was for each participant to get two microphones - one that picked them up while playing Password, and another for when they turned to guess the puzzle. They obviously figured out how to deal with one mic per person some weeks into the run.
-Jason
They originally thought they would need an additional mic when the players turned toward the puzzle board.
Most of the fan noise came from the projector for the puzzle board. Bobby Sherman thought these short shotguns would kill the fan noise but alas not. The shotguns were condenser mics and the Shures were dynamics. I think you hear more fan noise with the condensers, and the Shures had more presence. What do you think, Ian?
Next we tried an Altec noise gate. It caused the background noise to pump. After a while I would come into the booth and the Altec noise gate was in place and we were being charged to rent it, but it wasn't hooked up.
Lastly, we'd had enough trouble with the "tower" projector (it was mounted on a small tower behind the R.P. screen). I urged Bobby to switch to hard artwork for the puzzle board and we eventually we did.
The proj. in the desk was connected to a long length of 4" clothes-dryer hose with a fan at the far end to exhaust the heat.
Super Password had colossal problems with interference from the neon around the set getting into the wireless mics. They should've gone back to the cabled Shure SM-53's.
Nowadays you might be able to kill some of that fan noise by micing the projectors and doing some fancy phase shifting.
