Picked up a an Intermountain F7A/B pair from the consignment closet at my LHS. Good price and really nice runners. These are the run from 2000 or so (IMR's 49002S and 49502S) with DCC and sound. Already speed-matched, which was convenient. Don't know who made the decoders for this run but they might be ESUs. [Edit Note: just read the included paperwork; the decoders are SoundTraxx Tsunamis]
Running them last night at the club, I shut down the sound altogether as it's currently set too high for my tastes (which are not particularly partial to sound anyway). Anyway, as I was following them on their first trip around the club's main line, there were two short stretches of about a foot each in the back room where the sound came back on, then turned back off. It was not the start-up sequence for the 567 prime movers but cut in as though the engines were running at speed. Same thing happened in the same location a second time around. I didn't pay close enough attention to notice where this happened to each of them or only to one. Thinking back, I suspect it occured only with the A unit, but I could be wrong.
I don't get into the techno-weeds with DCC; I have enough trouble handling a simple controller . Even so, I found this phantom appearance of sound (at speed, no less) a bit bizarre. None of the other three guys at the club ventured a guess.
Any ideas out there?
BTW, I find the headlights a bit too bright and would like to decrease their intensity by, oh, 20%. Would a resistor in series do the trick and if so, what value?
Thanks, guys!
John
Hi John.
The first thing to try is to disable DC in CV29. If you Google CV29 calculator and answer a few questions it will spit out a CV value for you. I imagine the sound comes on when powered? You can set this so the sound is muted and then activated by pressing F8. The Soundtraxx website has the user manual. There is also a YouTube video from Soundtraxx that instructs the procedure.
A 200 ohm resistor added to one wire of each LED should dim your headlight about 20%.
Pete.
I suspect your engine is hitting a section of dirty track on the layout you're running it on. It's just long enough to stop and reboot the decoder, so it shuts down for a split second then restarts with sound, then 'remembers' you muted the sound and turns the sound back off. If the problem happens a lot, you can add a Soundtraxx Current Keeper that will provide back-up power over the dead spots. Maybe clean the wheels on the engine too.
If your engine has a Tsunami, CV 128 should be the master volume. Setting it to a lower number reduces the overall volume. You can later go back and adjust individual sounds if one particular one is too loud.
To turn off DC, adjust CV29 to 34 if you don't plan to use speed tables or 50 if you do want speed tables.
Function button 7 dims the headlight. You can adjust the brightness of the headlight using CV settings, but not sure which ones just now. You can check the manuals. Changing a CV is a lot easier than opening up the engine and soldering a resistor in place.
https://soundtraxx.cohttps://soundtraxx.com/content/Reference/Manuals/Tsunami/tsunami_diesel_technical_reference_0213.pdf
https://soundtraxx.com/content/Reference/Manuals/Tsunami/usersguide_diesel.pdf
https://soundtraxx.com/content/Reference/Manuals/Tsunami/quickstart.pdf
Thanks, Stix!