I came across this vintage electronic sound throttle. I have searched over the internet to find a manual and how this piece of equipment worked without success. Anyone have info?
I have not heard of that throttle but im interested in hearing about it.
Most of all welcome!
Welcome to the forums, mred!
The Modeltronics 1200d came up in an old thread on this site. There was a poster there who had several of these and encouraged the person to contact him.
I donāt know if that person is still around on the forum.
Hereās the link:
I have been on the forum since 2004. When I saw the guyās name that you are referring to, I did not recall him at all. My guess is that he is not on this new version of the forum.
Rich
Modeltroincs sound systems came and went long before the internet, so good luck.
They made one of the first āon boardā sound systems, and they made these throttles. There were similar products at that time, like the PFM system (Pacific Fast Mail - an importer of brass locomotives).
The throttles worked by carrier system. The sound signal was superimposed over the rails and ādecodedā by a receiver and speaker in the tender or in a dummy diesel unit. We tried to sell them in the late 70ās when I managed a train department in a hobby shop. But price, sound quality, and other limitations made it more a novelty than something a lot of people would buy.
I seriously doubt you will find much info, unless you just happen to find the guy who has a pile of it in his basement.
Sheldon.
Not very good news. Let us know if you find what you are looking for.
Rich
Maybe some additional info here:
https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/sc-magoffin-modelelectronics-1881616401
Or just a rehash.
Thanksā¦ much what people have said is what I already knew about the unit. I
They made o ne of the first āon boardā sound systems, and they made these throttles. There were similar products at that time, like the PFM system (Pacific Fast Mail - an importer of brass locomotives).
The throttles worked by carrier system. The sound signal was superimposed over the rails and ādecodedā by a receiver and speaker in the tender or in a dummy diesel unit. We tried to sell them in the late 70ās when I managed a train department in a hobby shop. But price, sound quality, and other limitations made it more a novelty than something a lot of people would buy.
I seriously doubt you will find much info, unless you just happen to find the guy who has a pile of it in his basement.
Sheldon.
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[quote=āATLANTIC_CENTRAL, post:5, topic:409615, full:trueā]
Modeltroincs sound systems came and went long before the internet, so good luck.
They made one of the first āon boardā sound systems, and they made these throttles. There were similar products at that time, like the PFM system (Pacific Fast Mail - an importer of brass locomotives).
The throttles worked by carrier system. The sound signal was superimposed over the rails and ādecodedā by a receiver and speaker in the tender or in a dummy diesel unit. We tried to sell them in the late 70ās when I managed a train department in a hobby shop. But price, sound quality, and other limitations made it more a novelty than something a lot of people would buy.
I seriously doubt you will find much info, unless you just happen to find the guy who has a pile of it in his basement.
I knew most of this and what others have said. I only wished I could find some technical info about how the unit ticked.
Sheldon.
[
I have hooked up the unit to an external speaker and I get an interesting diesel idle sound that can be modified. I gather that external sounds can be inputted by a cassette which may be inputted to the speaker system or thru the rails. I thought if I could find a patent # (which I canāt), I would be able to get more specifics about its design and function. I am just curious about this oddity.
ED
I wonder if the official name of this thing is āMagoffin Modelectronics Soundthrottleā.
Anyhow, under the category āthings one finds when reading magazines just before you are about to dispose of themā, I came across an ad for one of these in the May 1984 Mainline Modeler.
I scanned it:
Tried to make it bigger, but failed.
Anyway, came with a Soundthrottle, tape and instructions; stereo tape player, tape player patch cord; and a power adapter. The steam unit was a 1001S, and the diesel a 1200D.
The 1984 prices were $390 for the steam, and $575 for the diesel. There is a note, āPrice Rise Soonā.
It looks like these were being sold through The Original Whistle Stop in Pasadena.
It would be a very long shot, but they have been in the same place for as long as I can remember, so if they are of the type that never throws anything away maybe they could provide additional info.
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We were setting up to do this on the Dwight-Englewood model railroad in the mid-Seventies, using carrier-current AM. At the time, an AM receiver was still too large to fit in most motorized locomotives.
What we proposed to use for variable sounds was a cassette tape with multiple tracks (there are four on a regular Philips compact cassette) ā you would switch tracks to get different diesel sounds, and swap tapes for various kinds of steam. You could reserve a track for a sort of crude horn or whistle. Some interesting effects could be achieved by using a pitch control (which Philips did not want you to do, but they were in Holland and we were notā¦)
Early on, we realized youād need a different tape for each sound if you wanted to vary it ā changing the chuff speed or intensity would change what came off the āwhistle trackā too. There was a roughly contemporary audio device that used tape loops corresponding to each note on a keyboard, which in theory could have given you attack, sustain, and decay on sounds in a user-selectable fashion. We didnāt try building an equivalent. The furthest we got was to think about building two different tape transports that could be tuned to appropriate speedsā¦
All of this would be a ridiculous expense for kludged and artificial sounds now. Any āsound decoderā small enough to fit on a locomotive would give you all the DC-compliant sound you could want, using the equivalent of something like a Quantum Engineer to send control data over the rails at higher frequency AC as described.
There is also Rolling Thunder, which does this stuff in reverse: it takes advantage of the non-directionality of an audio subwoofer to āexportā the low-frequency indormation from a decoder and export it to a fixed low-frequency speaker somewhere on or under the scenery.
I used the Modeltronics systems that were contained in the locomotive or dummy. The diesel sound was ok, better than nothing. It had a pot on the board - turn it one way, it sounded chirpy like an Alco, turn it the other way, it sounded more like more like an EMD. I still have these installed in two locos that havenāt been converted to DCC.
I also have a steam system installed in my PRR T1. Given that all it required was a white noise generator, it sounds pretty good. It used a cam switch that you fabricated on the back of a driver with brass wire and a cross-shaped insulator. It also had an optional air compressor add-on module that intermittently hissed. I might just leave it on the loco when I convert it to DCC.
I bought the steam sound system, and had some trouble following the directions, they had been edited to death. I wrote them a letter for clarification, the gentleman called me, and in the conversation, I offered to rewrite the instructions. (I had tech writing experience and access to those new fangled word processors and a laser printer.) I did so, in exchange for a couple of diesel systems.
So I have an emotional attachment to that steam system. Itās sure that the right DCC decoder would sound more realistic, but me and the Modeltronics go way back.
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