FINALLY finished putting sound in my Stewart F7B. Sorry no pictures yet, but I will take a couple soon. I picked up a load of old computer junk a few weeks ago and there was a speaker that looked prmising. I checked it out today and indeed, it was the EXACT width of the shell. Perfect. I’ve had this SOundtraxx DSD-100LC decoder for a year and a half now, been testing it out with various speakers and things. I decided I was finally going to actually install it - at least a year ago I had installed wires on the truck pickups (nice of Stewart to use the same trucks and sideframes as the powered units - thus all I had to do was solder wires to the tabs and bingo, instant power source. If you look at the examples page on Litchfield Station’s web site, Bruce has pictures of a Stewart FT B, pretty much the same thing. I just used one speaker though, that’s all I had, unless I wanted to also add the small speaker I picked up way back when I got the decoder. Not really worth it adding such a teeny speaker. I sliced off the protrusions on the frame that hold the drive components with the Dremel, and cut out a rectangle of .080 styrene to fit between the vertical portions of the frame. Double-sided tape fastens the plastic to the speaker magnet, and also holds the decoder to the other side.
It’s not super loud, this is more of a “you hear it when walking alongside it” kind of loco, not a “fills the entire basement with the thunder of a locomotive” kind of thing. And because it’s the LC generic decoder, it’s not exactly an EMD first generation sound. Nor is the horn any specific type. It did have three choices, they just call them small, medium, and large, basically a single note honker (what I used - matches the prototype details at least), a 3-chime, and a 5-chime.
Couple things I need to do yet. First is to paint the sides of the plastic shelf flat black - you can see it through the portholes. Next is to figure out how to add a keep-alive capaci
I put a Soundtraxx LC in my P1K Alco RS3. I cranked up the volume a bit with a CV, and then reduced the volume from my P2K 0-6-0, and now I’m much happier. In general, I suspect a lot of people get tired of sound, or find it annoying, simply because it’s up too loud and it distracts from the experience rather than adding to it.
My layout is only 5x12 feet, but even at that I find that the chuff of a steamer or chugging of a diesel should be barely audible from the far end. The whistle should sound distant from the other side of the room. Earth-shaking sound can be “impressive,” but other than for show-off value it’s really not necessary.
Oh I’ve cut my QSI and Loksound units WAY back, they always ship them set for max volume and they are WAY too loud. The generic LC is very low in comparison to even a cut-back QSI. Partly because of the speaker, partly because of the decoder, and partly because of the imperfect baffle. I need to close off the ends around the truck mounts a little better, although I don;t knwo if it would be worth it. The sides are not sealed either, simple because of the combination porthole glass and mounting tabs used by Stewart. The sides of the shell thus are not smooth, and if I make the shelf wider it won;t clear the porthole pieces. Maybe I could fill the top with foam or something to better seal the sides of the shelf - it’s not like the decoder is even going to get warm with no motor connected to it.
I had my B-unit P2K F2 dummied so that I could have a 110 LC installed. I am not able to appreciate that it isn’t an accurate sound, and neither are my few guests. But I must say that it sounds great in that shell, and seems to match the other decoder types when they are not running at factory settings. On the other hand, it did not do so well in my Heritage 0-6-0. Sounded fine…from 12" away. I eventually swapped it out for a Tsunami, and it is better. Not much better, but better.
Nice to have some things stroked off the to-do list, Randy. I know this is the type of project you prefer, anyway. [:-,]
Randy, glad you got to use that. Like the way you AQUIRE the parts to make it work. YOur comment about the Tsunami compared to the Lok and QSI got me. My Sound guru is putting a Tsunami on my H8 now. I wanted to try a LOK but he said that the Tsunami is better and put out a better sound. He is putting (2) oval speakers in the tender of the H8. Hope he works faster than he did with the Big Boy that took 4 months!!
Is the instal as easy as it looks in the diagram. Just like the motor decoder but add the speaker wires?
The wiring part of a sound decoder is pretty trivial. It’s just 2 more wires than the regular decoder. If you’re using it only for the sound, with another decoder for the motor and light functions, then it’s an even easier add-on.
The problem, of course, is physically installing the speaker. Most engines these days don’t have a lot of room inside the shell. That’s why so many people are using dummies for diesel sound. Steamers have that nice, big, empty tender, which is another reason that steam sound seems to be so much better than diesel.
I had to cut away some of the support structure, hence removing weight, to get the speaker box into the RS3. The LC decoder was smaller than the original light board, so that helped a bit, and most of what I cut out was only there to support the old light board anyway. Still, it took a number of tries to get it all together in a manner that didn’t interfere with truck motion and still let me put the shell back on. Now, though, my “silent” engines mostly sit on sidings while the Alco gets all the work.
Just a thought - a nice thing about B-units for F- or E-unit diesels is that, since they usually use the same chassis as the A units, they often have a pretty large open area in them where you could install a speaker. For example, I have an A-B set of Proto E-units, both are powered. I set the B unit’s chassis up so it’s facing forward (i.e., cab-end forward) and removed the cab interior. This gave me enough room to install a 1" speaker and enclosure. Works nice, the speaker is near the coupling between the two engines, unless you’re right next to it you can’t tell that the sound is only coming from the B unit. I think in a Stewart B unit you could do something similar, then you wouldn’t have to worry about a capacitor etc. as it would be a powered unit.
There’s room for more speakers, but I only had one. I’ve seen as many as 3 - two large and one small, with a crossover to keep the lower frequencies out of the small speaker. There’s a lot more frame that could be cut away in the unit, I’m thinking you could probably cram two large omes firing down, plus a pair of small ones facing up. Problem is the fan and grill castings are solids, so it bottles up the sound somewhat. The fans would be tough to fix, but the side grills could be cut out and replaced with some etched metal ones that are see-thru.
Powered or not, these particular decoders are very picky about dirty track. I’ve got all 8 wheels picking up on the B unit, but spots where I don’t even notice the headlight flicker on the A unit, powered with a TCS motor decoder, the sound cuts out.
This is more or less an experiment anyway, since the sound decoder was only $30. If I did it again I’d use a Loksound probably, or a DSX.
I have several of the LC decoders installed. Diesels and Steam. I usually install the decoder and speakers in a dummy B-unit, probably similar to your installation. I had a problem ‘stutter’ too.
My first few LC decoders came with a capacitor for installation in the speaker circuit. I don’t even bother now.
I couple the A and B units together with a 2-conductor Miroctronics micro-plug connecting the power leads of both units.
With F7s set this arrangement gives you 16-wheel pick up. On an ALCO PA/B or E8/7 set you have 24 wheel pick up. No more stutter.
Now go out and buy 4 more without sound. Come back in 1 1/2 * 4…6 years and show us those installs. [(-D]. That’s what I did! It’s 1 1/2 years later and I’m still staring at those decoderless shays, 2-6-6-6, and 2-8-0’s (Or however you spell it)
That would be fine if I kept the A and B together al the time, but in my books I have plenty of pictures of the B units runnign with a GP7 instead of their corresponding A unit, so I plan to shuffle them around and conist together what I want to run. Thice nice thing is, I cna change a CV on the fly and run a multichime horn like the GP7’s have, or switch it back to the single note one when coupled to an A.
You should always use the speaker capacitor - that has nothing to do with power retention, it is there to limit the frequency response of the speaker. Unless you can cram a really big speaker in, and even so, in HO it won’t be big enough, the speaker can’t reproduce very low frequencies and that energy is just wasted, plus it can cause distortion. Ideally the value should probably be adjusted depending on the characteristics of the speaker being used, but the included one is a good start.
Come back in 1 1/2 * 4…6 years and show us those installs. [(-D]. That’s what I did! It’s 1 1/2 years later and I’m still staring at those decoderless shays, 2-6-6-6, and 2-8-0’s (Or however you spell it)