If MRC decoders actually worked and lived up to their “world’s greatest” advertising, then you would be getting what you have payed for. But a dead MRC decoder is just useless…unless you feel that 50 street bucks for a 1cm spare piece of PC board is a good deal…
Look at it from this point of view. Lets say you purchase an MRC decoder with speaker.
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You spend a few hours installing the decoder and speaker.
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You put it on the track and it works.
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5 minutes later your loco stops, then takes off at full speed. You turn off your system in horror, then the decoder stops responding.
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You do a decoder reset, it runs, but no sound.
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You realize by posting on these forums that you need to change an undocumented Cv to make the sounds work again (49=1)
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The loco works again, but the sound is way too loud. Bad news as it is on the lowest setting. You search for ways of turning the sound down…but there is no way.
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The decoder works, but it decides to unlearn the programming you fed it yesterday. The slow speed control is horrible…you post questions on the forums about the slow speed control.
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You sigh and decide to just run the loco and enjoy what you can. The loud sound and horrible speed control limits your enjoyment to about 3 minutes at a time.
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The decoder eventually dies…and so does your enjoyment of sound in HO scale locomotives.
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You call up MRC and they tell you to uninstall and send them the decoder. You get a new one and repeat the installation process (step 1). This time, the decoder just fails.
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MRC wont give you your money back. You are out 50 bucks and your time. You ask yourself “is it worth it?”. You uninstall the MRC decoder again and go out and buy a quality sound decoder. It go