. Our systems are built to customer specifications by hand in small batches here in the US. The rugged system you are looking at is a mass produced item from China or Korea. The system you are looking at there is actually their least costly configuration with the headsets shown, so I don't think it would get much cheaper even with over the head headsets, but I could be wrong. With that said, it would be difficult for me to get our pricing under $1,000 for a complete system with headsets as you describe. Roughly, we would be in the $1,450 ballpark for one of our systems.

Now for the justification. Besides being hand built in the USA, our systems are built to out live the vehicles they put in. We have been doing this for 30 plus years and many of our systems have been in use 15 years or more in specific off shore boats and off road trucks without issue. Internally we build our systems with two independent power supplies, where others do not. We hard wire all cabling off the board out of the box where others use plug in cables. Each cable has a connector with 4 solder joints per connector, per side. Adding in the 2 connectors and the 8 solder joints, you increase possible failures by 10 times. We do not use VOX at all. Our systems are live continuous. VOX needs to be adjusted based on the increased noise environment. At idle you set it at one level, at speed another, and so on. If you set it too tight, your first word can be clipped. If that first word is turn or stop, it could be costly. Besides becoming a pointless feature, I primarily mention the VOX topic as you say you want something simple. Simple is what we believe in. Once our intercom is mounted, it has power, cables are run, and headsets are plugged in, you are talking live continuous. Those are just some of the reasons our intercom is set apart from others.

In regard to the headsets, we are all pretty much using the same ones. The only thing I do different from others is use a genuine military grade mic. Others are using copies of such a mic. If after reading this you would like a detailed quote, please let me know. By all means I would love to build you a system, but if budget is a concern, we might not be the right fit for your needs. I can say if you do have a system built by us, if it is taken care of, it is likely to provide you with many years of enjoyment.