Suddenly.......no sound!

I put a Soundtraxx LC series decoder in my Atlas GP-38. Everything was fine, but the

speaker vibrated/distorted. I suspected that the rigid glueing of the speaker to the removable

hatch on the body was the culprit. THe speaker goes through a 2 wire connector, so I removed

the hatch and popped the speaker off, it was only held by 2 drops of white glue. Reattached

the speaker with 2 small pieces of foam double-sided tape. Reassembled the Loco and…

NO SOUND!

Rechecked my connections and decoder settings, can’t find the problem. Ideas?

For laughs and giggles see if there’s a switch on the throttle. My on off switch is F8.

Examine the speaker and decoder very carefully, checking that you didn’t pull a wire loose or that a bare wire is touching metal on the frame or shell.

If the speaker connections look ok, checdk continuity with a meter from end to end of both speaker wires.

Pop a speaker loose and nothing else, and loose sound, and odds are you disturbed the electrical connection.

Distortion, and often sympathetic resonant vibration, are often a product of an over driven amplifier. Turn the sound down till it is no longer distorted, and then a fuzz more, before drawing any conclusions regarding anciliary vibration.

See that anything touch the cone of the speaker; it is very, very sensitive.

I’m guessing that you broke a wire. Take the shell off, put the engine on the track and try it. You’ll probably need to take the speaker out of its enclosure to check the wiring.

You can check the wiring to the speaker with an ohm meter. Take the engine off the track, and touch the probes of the meter to the outputs of the decoder. It should be 8 ohms. (I think the decoder itself should be high impedance, right? So all the meter will really read is the speaker resistance. I’m not sure on that one.)

Well, I checked it out today and found that the speaker has gone open circuit.

I must have somehow broken it while prying it off the hatch.

Guess I’ll be stopping at K-10’s this saturday.