ESU makes replacement speakers. If you go to their site, you will find them. ESU uses 100 ohm speakers and these are two 50 ohm speakers in series. LokSound micro 3.5 82863. This is programmed for a 4-6-6-4 articulated engine. They have multiple sounds, diesel and steam, available. The boiler front is full of lead to give some weight. The speakers are glued to the back/top inside the tender. The baffles/enclosures that come with the speakers are just a little too big and had to be trimmed a little. After they were glued in, I had to seal the enclosures on the sides to get the sound better. The Oval speaker was just too big. If one were to get an autorack or Hi Cube car and install the decoder and oval speaker in it, you could put the car behind anything and have some great sound. The 3.5 decoders come with a six wire male plug. Order the matching six wire female and you could put the plugs in the decoder car so as to be able to take the car and engine apart. I have already done this with my only other brass engine from AZL, a C-44W Silver BNSF, but I think I ruined the motor soldering the wire to it. Anywhoo... John's hobbies site (or others) should have everything you need. The patience you have to supply! Any other questions? And thank you for the compliments.
Found the speakers: 50339 loudspeaker 13mm, round, 50 Ohm, with sound chamber I don't know it this is two speakers or not. It seems it would have to be as they stress the 100 ohm part. The harness part is: 51951 cable harness with 6-pin plug according to NEM 651, DCC colour, length 300mm On the Challenger, I just cut off the plug, soldered and covered with heat shrink tubing.
David: A snip from one of my HO & Prototype rivet counting train friends. He is an expert in most everything so take it for what it is worth -- but there are not a lot of steam folks still around. THE CORRECT WHISTLES ARE (1) SHORT BLAST WHEN THE BRAKES ARE APPLIED WHEN STOPPED, (2) SHORT BLAST BEFORE MOVING FORWARD AND (3) SHORT BLAST BEFORE MOVING IN REVERSE. I BELIEVE HE HAS THE MOTOR WIRES WIRED BACKWARD. THIS IS A COMMON MISTAKE WHICH IS EASY TO FIX. ...don
Thanks Don, I had to switch CV's so the engine would go the right way, but the sound is still backward. I will switch the engine wires in the tender eventually to fix this. I have yet to figure out how to turn on AUX 2 to turn back on the yellow (now toned down) flicker effect. The LokSound 3.5 decoders have four functions available. I am using headlight, tail light, red firebox (steady) and yellow flame (flicker). If you are adding sound, go whole hog on the effects. No smoke generators
ZoCal got our 14 modules hooked up and I got the Challenger running. Then Don F. got his 50 PFE cars out and it pulled them and the UP caboose no problem. Video of that will be taken tomorrow. If I backed up and took out all the slack, the engine would move 6" forward before all the slack was taken up. Well the PFEs were all converted to FVM wheels too. Broken down: $1500 Challenger $140 sound decoder 50 PFEs @ $10 each = $500 200 FVM wheels = $160 Running a 12' long train in Z scale = priceless!
It was just the beginning, no public yet, set-up day. I had to leave around 6:00, but I've noticed, at least a dozen of N scalers, and a few more from the bigger scales were coming and going to watch our modules, models and actions with a clear disbelief on their face. Some even called us nutZ... I bet, after this weekend we're going to have more converts, than ever before.
Any preferred webshops to recommend? I post it here, even if it's a little offtopic. Have any of you a preferred webshop to buy ESU Loksound Micro Decoders, TCS decoders and NCE equipment(USB Adapter)? It looks after some checking that it will be best prices to buy in US(Ship it from Germany in Europe to US and back to Norway:mooh Half price compared to my local shop here in Norway and also cheaper than from Germany. So if some of you have any good shops to recommend, please let me know. I want Sound in my Z-scale Challenger too:tb-biggrin:.
We have the same problem trying to find CT mini decoder over here. I have not found one Z supplier for all that you want. The best I have found is a DCC only dealer in Ohio on the internet. cheerz Garth
I do not need to have everything from one shop, and I have also found one in Ohio that looks OK. I will continue my search:tb-biggrin:
Do a google search for the specific part number and you will be directed to sites that offer that part. I have found John's Hobbies to have just about everything. When I open up the tender to switch the engine wires, I will take pictures of the mess.. uh, I mean placement of the parts in the tender. We shot some video of the Challenger pulling the 50 PFEs and one little UP caboose this morning. And I had the total value of the train off. $3,000 not including the caboose. But still priceless.
Yes, I seen pics that another Trainboard member and Show Goer "fatalxsunrider43" took, posted in another topic: Pics from todays ONTARIO CONVENTION CENTER TRAIN SHOW - TrainBoard.com
The original headlight literally ground off and the golden white led glued on: The side view. These were bought at the Medford show because they already had the red/green leads soldered on. These were glued to the top of the front drivers and then up to the boiler at the pivot point. Painted the wires and the circuit board/LED black. The sides of the LED must be painted black too. The speaker placement in the back. The decoder fits up into the front - sort of. At an angle to try and let it be able to cool off. No extra holes were drilled into the bottom piece. It has enough gaps and holes to let the sound out. I later had to seal the speakers better. You need to have a sealed airspace behind the speakers to improve the sound. Hope this helps.
It looks really good, and to use "golden" is exactly what it should be. Just with high resistor, so it is best simulating the real thing. Small thing about the loksound is that you should not attemp to take the shrink tube away to save some place (I killed one). Because the force is so strong that it can lift some components off... Last, all this will be great and with the combined color firebox, delicious. Anyway this decoder simulates the firebox much better as some other. I was in the times using 1 speaker, it was not more place in the tender and also necessary to put it slightly diagonal. It is tricky to build a reveberator chamber this way. But because of the special speaker output of 100Ohm, you have no other solution. I also didnt found alternate from ESU. In this, CT are easier with 8 Ohm.
Here we see a blurred (to protect his identity ) Jeff running trains. He thought he would just kind of show up and watch the show. Little did he know that a controller would end up stuck in his hand for about four hours!
