Any one have a new Kato FEF-3 that has a Kobo sound installed in it ? Was wondering what decoder was in it and how well it performed. Thanks in Advance. woodone
According to Kato, the Kobo FEF will have a TCS plugn'play decoder installed. Everything depends how Kobo programs the CV's (CV 56 and CV57) and turning off BEMF in order to obtain a very respectable slow speed.. I have one on the way with the decoder factory installed. I will use the two decoder approach and install a Soundtraxx Tsunami sound decoder and speaker in the tender.
Maybe you misread my question- Kobo is installing a SOUND decoder into this loco. My question was, Who's decoder did they use and how well did it perform with the coreless motor? Ordering one with a sound installed must be easier that doing the install yourself.
I'd be very hesitant to order a Kobo unit without also knowing what their speaker implementation is. The Soundtraxx "how to" on installing a TSU-750 in the FEF shows a speaker without a separate enclosure mounted on the tender floor, firing out of holes drilled there. http://www.soundtraxx.com/documents/appnotes/kato_fef3_n-scale.pdf This implementation is almost certain to sound awful - tinny and thin. If you want to do this right, a Knowles Fox/Wildcat or Dumbo/Grand in a separate enclosure is the way to go, and I seriously doubt Kobo will do it this way. In fact, I strongly suspect that the Kobo sound implementation will be exactly that shown by Soundtraxx - a TSU-750 heavy steam and a 14 x 25mm rectangular speaker mounted to the bottom of the tender floor with no separate enclosure. I've never had the best of experiences with the Tsunami's motor control, but it DOES have adjustable BEMF parameters, and it MIGHT be decent in this context. Until someone tries it, we won't know, and I'm not going to try it myself, since I'm pretty happy with my Zimo MX621 for motor/Tsunami for sound only combo. John C.
Could you please be more specific. Who are you addressing this question to, and exactly what are you asking? If the question is what do "you" do with the motor leads for the sound decoder in a two-decoder install, the answer is that "I" don't do anything with them. Some folks wire a 100-ohm 1/2-watt resistor between the two leads so that the decoder will give feedback on a programming track (I always use ops mode programming for sound decoders, so I don't really care about a programming track). If you go the resistor route, you should create a custom speed table in the decoder with all the entries set at zero, so that the decoder isn't actually feeding power to the resistor in normal operations. John C.
I never heard of Kato doing a Kobo sound install on the FEF. I Kobo DCC decoder yet, sound, I dont think so. I hope Im wrong but dont count on ordering one just yet. Kato is too tight lipped for that to be official.
