OK so I'm thinking cheap and for a sound equipped loco these are cheap. A previous thread revealed that the drives aren't really much good but what about the decoder and sound? Wonder if it may be worthwhile to get one, gut the motor/drivetrain and make it a sound dummy? Could put it into permananet consist with another F and hook the power leads together for all wheel pickup from both locos.
So anyone know anything about the decoders? Ever actually heard one?
Modeling the Cleveland and Pittsburgh during the PennCentral era starting on the Cleveland lakefront and ending in Mingo junction
What decoders are you referring to? Yes, I have heard and used many of them -- QSI, SoundTraxx, Digitrax, LokSound. There's more room in one of these engines than in the newer ones because of the vertical pancake motor they used that is part of the truck; and I've installed sound in some of them for other club members. Their biggest weakness is that only one truck's wheels pick up power. The actual driven wheels are nearly always plastic. And I've done some like you suggested by putting the sound into them and connecting them electrically to another locomoitve to improve the electrical pickup. The ability to do this is not as much of an issue as their poorly designed system of using plastic wheels on one truck and relying on only 4 undriven wheels for electrical pickup.
That is being done now by myself and others.
I have a A unit with a sound decoder that drives a speaker in the A unit and the motor.
Then a six wire connector between the A and B units. The A unit decoder drives the speakers in the B unit and also the motor. The diaphragms hides the wires quite nicely. You can barely see the wires in a curve.
The advantage I have is, all the wheels in both units pickup power from the track.
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
I'm referring to the F units that Trainworld advertises as dcc/sound all wheel drive for about a C note. And I'm wondering how they sound, who supplies their decoder. I did a sound expeiment a couple years ago with an MRC Sounder and an old Bachman F unit (pancake motor, horn hook, et etc) That convinced me of 2 things: 1 I like sound. 2.I don't want to do my own sound installs 3. poor running locos can be gutted into reasonable dummies
These Model Power locos may not pull or run right but if they sound ok and cost less than many sound decoders well...
I suspect those locos have the MRC sound decoder. One fellow in our club has installed some MRC sound decoders in some of his diesels because of cost and has had only one failure which MRC replaced for free.
If you do not count rivets, at least you have a passable sound loco but others will disagree.
Run your locos with a DCC controller rather than a DC power pack.
According to the Model Power web site these are the MRC sound decoders.
Simon Modelling CB&Q and Wabash See my slowly evolving layout on my picturetrail site http://www.picturetrail.com/simontrains and our videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/MrCrispybake?feature=mhum
I found it interesting that some of the on line places that sell the locos do not mention the decoder brand which I suspect is because of the negative info I have seen about MRC sound decoders.
I just went to the Model Power site about an hour ago.
My first Roundhouse 4-4-0 with sound had the MRC decoder which I removed and installed the Micro Tsunami as I did not like the speed control of the decoder.