The Fast Money board lives!

[Casey Buck]

It's now in safe hands at the Strong Museum's National Archives of Game Show History. Specifically, this is the board from the Combs/Dawson 94 version.

Thanks to Corey Cooper (Ted's son), who brought it back to life, and to Randy West, who kept it all these years.

[JasonA1]

It's absolutely fascinating to finally HEAR the thing in operation after all these years. Fantastic stuff!

-Jason

[MSTieScott]

Mesmerizing.

As Jason said, the sound is something else. I've noticed on Dawson episodes that the sound of each individual Fast Money answer being revealed was often faintly picked up by an open microphone, but that's nothing compared to hearing so many characters change in rapid succession. Even though this video was taken in an echoey storage space, that sound must have been a surprise to the contestants onstage.

[BrandonFG]

Didn't realize how loud the board was. I wonder if that's part of the reason they used a sound effect for the reveal on Combs's version?

This video is very mesmerizing.

[TimK2003]

Didn't realize how loud the board was. I wonder if that's part of the reason they used a sound effect for the reveal on Combs's version?

This video is very mesmerizing.

Remember, though, a single answer or survey amount reveal on the FM board would be far less noisy than the full fledged "Family Feud" ever-changing logo from the Comb's version.  I don't think that even without the reveal SFX, you wouldn't hear much noise from the board as it's only about 8-10 characters max.

[WhammyPower]

Math would dictate it's approximately 1/2 the volume, since four parts of the board are changing at once for the full logo, but two parts at once for a single answer.

/Math also says sound is not a linear progression, so in reality, it doesn't go down by that much, maybe about 6 dB.

[knagl]

Math would dictate it's approximately 1/2 the volume, since four parts of the board are changing at once for the full logo, but two parts at once for a single answer.

It would be significantly less than half the volume of the whole board flip-flopping for the Family Feud word logo.

Looking at the close-up picture of the board:



Each character is five dots wide and seven dots tall. That's 35 dots that need to flip to black per revealed letter, minus however many dots remain in their "lit up" state to form the letters for the word. Even for a non-answer, that's a total of 385 dots flipping (11 characters allowed * 35 dots per character).



When the board is doing the full-screen "Family Feud" flip-flop, there are 8,400 dots (30 characters * 8 rows * 35 dots per character) changing state.

8,400 dots changing state are going to create a lot more noise than up-to 385 dots.

[daveromanjr]

I remember in the E! THS of Feud they showed a video of when Roseanne and Tom Arnold opened the show saying "we're on the family feud to start a family feud!" It was shot on one part of the stage and you can very easily hear the FAMILY and >FEUD< switching on the podiums.  The mics of the camera used for the shooting picked up a LOT of that noise versus Roseanne and Tom.

Edit - Here's a link to the video which should take you right to the point I mentioned https://vimeo.com/306603983#t=41m35s

[chris319]

Mesmerizing.

As Jason said, the sound is something else. I've noticed on Dawson episodes that the sound of each individual Fast Money answer being revealed was often faintly picked up by an open microphone, but that's nothing compared to hearing so many characters change in rapid succession. Even though this video was taken in an echoey storage space, that sound must have been a surprise to the contestants onstage.

In the studio the dots weren't as loud as that video would lead you to believe.

Dawson version: when the answers were revealed the contestant was facing away from the downstage mic that picked up his answers. That mic could be closed and Richard's mic would pick up the contestant's reactions.

When the board displayed the "Family Feud" title, wasn't music played over it?

During the show opening, when the families are "frozen" in a pose, if you listen very carefully you might hear the stage manager yell very loudly "move" to cue the family to unfreeze. Gene Wood's mic would be the only one open on stage and music would be playing.

[Otm Shank]

Also, remember that the board transitions and Fast Money reveals were considerably slower in the Dawson era due to the computer driving the display. So there were not as many mechanical movements going on simultaneously.