I am waiting on the delivery of one of these items, with a Tsunami sound decoder factory installed, ordered last May. I read in a recent post on an unrelated product, a poster's remark about an unspecified trouble or troubles with his Genesis 4-6-6-4. Have any of the forum members experienced regret at having purchased a Genesis Challenger? If so, would you please elaborate on the nature of your experience with this product. Thanks.
Will.
Will:
Up until now,the genesis challenger came with the MRC decoder. It was awful. I changed mine out with a QSI Titan,and all the problems went away. Most of the problems I have read about with the challenger seem to be MRC decoder related. I also have two of the newer genesis Big Boys that came with tsunamis installed,and I'm very happy with them.
Mike
No, all the problems I have had with a Genesis 4-6-6-4 is one of the old ones with the MRC junk electronics in it. The Tsunami is a top rate piece of electronics. There should be no trouble with it.
In fact about 4 years ago I purchased a Tsunami to put into my Challenger and replace the MRC, just another one of those thousands of projects that I haven't gotten around to doing it yet.
We have a new club member who recently moved here from Chicago. Because he had no layout there and didn't know what he was getting, he purchased a whole fleet of Athearn Genesis locomotives with MRC sound. We're now in the process of converting some of them to LokSound, and he's going to sell the rest on e-Bay.
My Genesis Challenger has the MRC chipset. It's not user friendly, but can be adjusted some with patience and notes/ JMRI. I have Tsunami's in most of the rest of my steam engines and have found them to be very good. You should be good, but keep in mind that the Tsunami's that come from the OEM are not the exact same as the aftermarket. And so, the functionality is different and/or less. For example I had to reprogram my Genesis MP15AC switcher so that I could use the same function buttons as my other locos.
A key thing, I have found only a couple of OEM sound locos where the sound install is done well. I almost always have to replace the speakers and fashion a better enclosure. This is the single best thing that makes the OEM locos sound better--outside of going to Tsunami(IMHO)
Richard
I bought one of the Athearn/MRC sound decoders on ebay, removed from a Genisis Challenger ($20). I put it in my Rivarossi Challenger and it works OK but not really very happy with it. I have a Rivarossi Big Boy that I put a Tsunami Large Steam sound decoder in and it is really nice. When I have some more $$$ I will replace the MRC decoder. Can't recommend it for anything!
-Bob
Life is what happens while you are making other plans!