(FIXED) Federal Signal Thunderbolt 1003 (Deathbolt) Siren Test | 1 Min Alert | Charloe, OH | 9/10/25

What's this?? Deathbolt actually got _fixed_?!?

Yes, you read that right. After over 10 years of slowly dying and getting worse and worse, it has finally been fixed...mostly.

A couple weeks prior to this, we decided to stop by and put a recorder here to see if it would manage to come back to life again, since it pretty much died at the end of my July audio recording. Upon pulling up, we noticed it was facing a different direction than it was last time we saw it, which caught us off guard a bit, since it sounded like it wasn't rotating in the July audio, so this raised our suspicions a bit and gave us even more reason to put a recorder here. Once we retrieved the recorder, we had a listen, and lo and behold, it was fixed! We were in absolute disbelief, and we knew we had to come and hear it in person as soon as possible, so we decided to dedicate the 2nd Wednesday of September to do just that.
Shortly before the test, there was a guy who came out from the building behind where I was set up, and we talked a bit before and after the test. As it turns out, he was the one who bought this siren, as well as a few of the other 'bolts for this county. He mentioned how they had this one fixed recently, and it turns out that the main problem was the chopper motor brushes were worn to basically nothing. They finally got the funds and equipment to do the repairs recently, and after putting new brushes into the chopper motor, it sounds MILES better than it did before. The slip rings still sound like they could use a bit of cleaning, but in any case, this is definitely the best it has sounded since at least 2014. I can also say that it is a lot louder than it was before, with it being about on par with the 1003 in Wapakoneta from my memory and experience. We will have to see if any farther work gets done on the slip rings, but either way, I'm definitely glad to hear it finally sound like a relatively normal 'bolt after so long of it sounding pretty much unrecognizable. I even decided to make an exception to my usual chronological order of uploading videos for this one, and I figured I might as well publicize my last couple recordings from before it was fixed along with this. Enjoy!

Tight shot: Panasonic Lumix DC-FZ80
Wide shot: Sony HDR-PJ710
Audio: Zoom H1n