The Siren Board

Figured this was topic-worthy.

I went on a little college visit down to Bowling Green, KY this week, and I managed to stop in Brownsville, KY to see their Screamer. When I got there, I noticed that it looked somewhat different than other Screamers I'd seen, and also very old. I proceeded to zoom in on the bottom of the unit itself, and noticed some lettering on the bottom of the stator. It read something along these lines: "ACA DIV OF BIERSACH & NIEDERMEYER CO MILW WIS USA PAT PEND" and then just above that line: "DS-1" Without further ado, here are the photos:

Entire setup:


A little closer:


Even closer:


Closeup of motor:


Lettering on the bottom of the stator, image flipped for convenience:


I've heard reference to Screamers that look like this as "7.5's" and am considering that as an option, but the "DS-1" has me confused.

Your images aren't working.

Should be fixed now.

The one in the picture is the very rare 8 port version of the Screamer. There's only a handful of these known out there. If I'm not mistaken this is a S-10 like the 9/12 port ones. The "10" referees to the motor HP. The S-7.5 is the larger 9 port one. The S-2 is the smaller 9 port one. Now I have seen people refer the larger 9 port one as the S-5, although I think that was just a more accepted term for it. Interestingly enough these sirens were the core of the Howler, and the Howler came in both 8 and 9/12 port configs.

Looks like they built it with a Mobil Directo motor and stator. Never seen one like that before!

That's on pretty much ever ACA siren. It's not a mobile directo stator, just an ACA.

The DS-1 is just a foundry casting number. Many mass-produced siren castings wield numbers which bear no relevance to anything besides parts categorization and perhaps cataloging at the foundry they were cast at. ACA did not always produce their own castings so the numbering is not consistent. The 8 port Screamer is larger than its 9 port counterparts, it is more or less an upside down version of the older Banshee 110. ACA changed their siren designs many times which gave us strange and short-lived variations of otherwise common sirens.

The patent ACA tried to apply were never published. I have never seen any ACA siren with a patent number cast in place of 'patent pending', nor does anything turn up in any patent archive. I believe they tried patenting the directional rotor blades which could not have warranted a patent because it wasn't a new idea. Other siren makers were already using the same directional blades.