Last night I went to a friends house where a group of us get together with some modules we are working on. I took my BLI SD40-2 for a little show and tell. These people have an interest in trains of course but none are “experts” the closest to an expert is my friend who worked for the CSX for a few years.
This was everyone’s first experience with a sound equipped locomotive and they were all highly impressed with both the locomotive and the sound. I told them that the “experts” had really come down hard on this model as being inaccurate in both look and sound. They could not believe what I was saying.
Before anybody replies repeating all the flaws this model has, don’t bother, I already know about most if not all of them. The point of my writing this is to point out that many people would be completely satisfied with owning this model and could care less about it’s flaws. It pulls a healthy string of cars and was fun to watch and listen too.
So don’t let those who are always ready to point out what’s wrong with this loco or that car dampen the fun you can have in this hobby. As long as it runs well and doesn’t fall apart at the first sign of misuse I think a model serves it’s purpose.
It’s missing the turbo sound?!! I couldn’t tell from listening to it at our local train show last february! (Although, it was a bit loud there at the time, very big show)
I think what they have there is a great model. If it didn’t take me a yar to save that much (As I’m a student) I would have 2 of them in BN, get some interchangin’ going!
Matthew
Sound is very subjective to each individual person and each of us wants to hear just the right sound according to our recollection. None of the sound installed models can make the low sounds that a real diesel makes and actually vibrates the hearer is you are close to a working unit in run 8. However, the more detailed they make the model, the critics show up to dispel any quality of the model compared to something they know about or saw in a show one time long ago. So many SD40-2’s have been made up until now, most critics just picked another one from the lot if they wanted one that had the correct phase details for their needs instead of coming down on the new produ
I do wi***hat I could hear the sound of a Nathan K3H coming out of it, while it’s nose headlight and cab mounted bell made great sounds. Oh well, I guess that’s what the Tsunami’s for…
Matthew
Well I see there are people out there that agree with my point of view and I’m glad to see it. My friends really liked my BLI SD40-2 and now they all want to get a sound equipped loco. They were especially impressed that it worked on DC power as well as DCC.
I like my SD40-2 pretty well; I have several Katos, and they run a bit
quieter and smoother at very low speed. Generally the BLI looks
are similar enough (in the UP version) that I wouldn’t complain.
Where I do have a complaint is that the chime sounds a little distorted,
as if the original recording overloaded the mike. I asked BLI to
check it out for a bad speaker or amp, but they said some others they
took off the shelf sounded the same, so mine was “normal”.
Being a longtime sound nut, maybe I am hearing something some others
don’t, or think is normal. My BLI E7 chimes are certainly cleaner.
Sounds like a great group of folks you hang out with. As far as anyone’s opinion on that SD40-2, it is only yours that counts. As long as you are happy with it, who cares.
I am no rivet counter, and I am not an expert on what each particular prime mover, horn, etc should sound like. Saying that, the engine has run continously without any problems and I like it. I tweaked the CV’s quite a bit, both sound and performance.