Couple specs on these new decoders. Nice sounds.




Typical Tsunami.



Rich

I am sure some of you already know the Tsunami with the shrink wrap form factor is not a choice for the VO-1000. Not enough room without a lot of modification. Not using diesel locos until now, I was not aware of the size limitation of the VO-1000 shell as I always thought the tender of a steamer.
Bowser/Stewart is no doubt going to use the drop in board type form factor like Bruce suggested. I just did not care for the sound Bruce was suggesting. Oh, well.
Before I got the Tsunami, I tried a spare steam Micro Tsunami using only the red, black, orange and Grey leads but it tends to shut down from overheating if I did some quick reversals. The Micros's are heat sensitive. I have measured the motor current at 12 volts DC and it is about 0.4 amps. The Micros are rated for 0.75 amps but the current spikes with quick reversals and I know that is not prototypical operation but in trying out a decoder and loco there might be a tendency to try to to see the loco responds.
I will see if I can swap the decoders for the type Bruce recommends. It will probably be a while before the proper form factor decoder is avaialble with the Baldwin sounds.

Rich

I have been in touch with SoundTraxx and they are working on a drop in type Tsunami for this loco. No time frame yet as I suspect they will provide the first ones for Bowser/Stewart.

Rich

The VO1000 would be a bear. An alternative would be a sound car either on the train or close by. A sound only with the same address as the motor and light controller. With a sound car you can get fancy with two way speakers or a bank of 2 or 4 lo bass.

I am exchanging the shrink wrapped Tsunami for a light board Tsunami that Bruce thinks is close to the VO-1000 sound. Below is a link Bruce sent to me some days ago. He did the conversion for a customer.


litchfieldstation.com/...828047.htm

Rich

Few photos. Great running and sounding loco.






Rich

Forgot to mention, one of the two decoders I had bought, I had the shrink cut back and kept it and removed the 9 pin JST connector completely. Yes I know, no more warranty but I can accept that. Soldered in the appropriate colored wires and checked it out with my home made decoder tester.
I have done installs of computer operated paper slitting/winding machines before I retired and this was about the same but on a much, much smaller scale. Sometimes you just have to make it work.

Below is a link to sound samples at the SoundTraxx site. I have the Baldwin VO 827111 decoder.

www.soundtraxx.com/dsd...isound.php

Rich

nice job!

Hello All

I have side to side comparison of the Tsunami with Baldwin sound and the
LokSound with Baldwin sound going right now.
One thing I do not like so far about the Tsunami is starting and stopping the
Prime Mover. I have to hit the EStop on my NCE Power Cab to get the shut down
sequence of the Prime Mover. Please note, I did not say "Silent Mode".
I have to select speed step one to restart the Prime Mover. When I do that, the
loco starts to move and the Prime Mover starts up about one second later. Not
prototypical by any means.
I found out if I quickly move the speed up to one or two and quickly go back to
zero, the Prime Mover starts but the loco does not move. Not the best situation
but I guess it will have to do.
SoundTraxx did go through the trouble to record start up and shut down of the
Prime Mover.
I will have to take a lot of time and look through the Tsunami manual to see if
this issue is addressed. Might be and I missed it.

I will have to pay more attention when running the Tsunami and LokSound at the
same time.
Now I wish I would have stayed with the LokSound. Oh, well, live and learn.

The LokSound can be configured to use Function 8 for starting and stopping the
Prime Mover. Real nice option. Speed step one, the locos start moving a 1 mile
per hour.

Rich

Here is the start of the second VO-1000 install. This decoder was suggested by Litchfield as they said it was close to the Baldwin sound. This decoder is the TSU-AT1000, 828047 model, a Fairbanks-Morse sound. We shall see. I will remove the present PC board and install the styrene base and mount the decoder on it like Litchfield did.



Litchfield install

litchfieldstation.com/...828047.htm

Rich

Decent sound is going to depend on getting that speaker isolated . The sound pressure from the back side of the speaker cone should be ported back through the shell. The front of the speaker cone fires straight down through the weight towards the trackbed. The weight tower is a natural speaker port. Bruce likes to use the shell as an enclosure whenever possible.

beaser wrote:

Decent sound is going to depend on getting that speaker isolated . The sound pressure from the back side of the speaker cone should be ported back through the shell. The front of the speaker cone fires straight down through the weight towards the trackbed. The weight tower is a natural speaker port. Bruce likes to use the shell as an enclosure whenever possible.

That is what I did with my first VO-1000 as you can see in this thread. I am going to do the same to the second install. Same thing Bruce did. with both installs and using the 16mm x 35mm speaker like Bruce.
I like the sound from diesels much better since it coming from the general location of the prime mover.
From many steamers, the sound comes from the tender.
I hope to be able to get the VO-1000 with the two trolley poles. That will be different.

Rich

I saw that what you had done and mentioned it for other peoples benifit. A lot of people don't realize how important it is to have the speakers properly baffled. You have to be able to build sound pressure on one side of the speaker cone. It actually doesn't matter which side. If the baffle volume is too small then the sound has no bottom end.

It's a hard concept to explain.

I had done something like the porting method that Bruce uses and saw that Bruce took it one step further. He had a really nice presentation on it a few years back.

Yeah, the speaker thing really confounds some people. In another forum, a bass speaker was suggested, 16mm x 35mm but there is no room for the speaker/enclosure combo.
I am very happy with the results though.
I do find the Tsunami are more sensitive to DCC interruptions that the LokSound so clean track, wheels and pickups is a necessity.
With DC and locos with flywheels on the motors, dirty track was not as big an issue. The club I belong to started around 1980 and about five years ago we switched to DCC. Took a while to get clean track after all those years. Many people think new track is clean and have problems for a while which really frustrates them.
It has to be difficut for those who do not use the Internet and are in model railroading.

Rich

I just finished up the second install This is the decoder Bruce suggested. It is a Fairbanks-Morse sound.





Cab, crew, LED headlight. I do not like running a loco without a crew.





Bruce replaced the stock LED's with his own but I used the stock ones. I ground some of the frame for clearance between the speaker and headlight fixture. I have a small four inch diameter bench grinder that did a very good job.

The Stewart loco is mostly snap together. Quite a design. Only four screws to hold the motor in place. The trucks are all snap together.

Rich