SD-9 Sound Install

[carlso]

Thanks John and Russ, expert by no means but I feel good about sticking with it. In short the original decoder had a problem and was not caused by my install.

Russ, as John said above, I set the pop off to come on when #8 is depressed to turn on and start the prime mover but also as he says I do not care for it because it pops way too often. I guess I'll turn it off again until I get more acquainted with the decoder cv's.

I am not going to be able to wait for the shell to be painted so I may post some pictures and short vid. with sound.

Carl

[carlso]

I knew that I could not wait so...................................



Let me critique myself. First off the main goof I made while shaving the two chassis halves was I got carried away and cut off the slots that the original light board fit into thus I could not use  part of the board to connect red & black pick up wires. I will watch that on the next two. You can see the decoder is on the head end with the Knowle's Wildcat speaker on the rear. The black mess in front of the speaker is 3 - 220uF 16v caps that are not wired in yet. You can see the blue and the grey/black wires remaining for that. The other cluster of wires on decoder end are for all 4 light functions plus the common blue. I am waiting for some 0603 LED's from Jim Hinds that should be in this week.

The 660uF capacitance may not seem enough but I am of the school that any amount is better than none at all even though the ESU decoders do not seem to suffer as bad as other brands. They have some degree of capacitance built in.

Yes, I milled quite a bit on these two chassis 1/2's as they are Atlas/KATO units from several years ago. I  purchased 3 brand new units and  am tickled because they should run well with my early version of their F-7's. I removed some material from the sides where the motor tabs are just to make sure of no contact and yes I used an abundant amount of Kapton tape as well. You can also see that I ran my red and black pick up wires down the sides of the frame and soldered to the strips on the bottom of frame. On my next two I think I will skip the holes in the frame near the motor tabs and just depend on the Kapton tape.

Always open for suggestions and or criticism, that's how I learn.

Always have fun !

Carl

PS: my LED's will be mounted to the top of the decoder, some how, using Pacer 560 Canopy Glue.

[jdcolombo]

Hi Carl.

Good work.  You don't really need 3 caps; I use 2 (440uf total) in my diesels where I can; sometimes (like in the RS3), I just use one.  The Atlas/Kato SD9's have such good electrical pickup that I think two would cure any momentary dropouts; as long as your track is clean and the wheels are clean, you can easily get away with just two.

In my RS3 install, I cut a channel between the frame halves to store the wires.  Not sure it's necessary, but it makes for a cleaner installation.  You can see it clearly in this photo:

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

Those are the only suggestions I have.  I might get out one of my Atlas/Kato units and add a Loksound just to see how the process goes.

John

[carlso]

Here is a short vid., I am not real happy with the bell so I may end up adjusting some more after shell is on permanently. Obviously still on work bench and shell is just placed over the speaker to get some idea of the covered sounds. Just having fun now.

   

 

Piece of cake, (tongue in cheek), may add sound to one of the two that I have remaining to do. Not sure that You tube does justice to the uploaded sounds. Oh well, this gives an idea of the Loksound files.

Carl

           

[wazzou]

I think the bell sounds OK, but my complaint all along on N Scale sound is the horn.
I just don't think the horns are loud enough.

Good job.

[carlso]

Bryan, thanks for the comment and I sort of agree with you regarding the horn. however, at this point and to be fair, I have not done a great deal of fooling with the cv's until I get the shell on properly and to stay. The sound will change substantially when that is done, I think ? ? ?

Carl

[powersteamguy1790]

Nice work Carl... The ESU files sound great.

Stay cool and have fun with it......

[jdcolombo]

Bryan, thanks for the comment and I sort of agree with you regarding the horn. however, at this point and to be fair, I have not done a great deal of fooling with the cv's until I get the shell on properly and to stay. The sound will change substantially when that is done, I think ? ? ?

Carl

The key is to adjust the relative volume of the horn and prime mover so that the horn beats the prime mover sound to a pulp.  What I do on my diesels is leave the horn at full blast (I think that's a setting of 128 in CV 275 (default) and turn the prime mover sound down to about 70.  Most folks have the prime mover volume set way too high; turning it down relative to the horn makes the horn really sound like a "blast" when you press F2 . . .  I also turn down the bell to about 70 as well.  You should be able to just hear it over the general rumble of the prime mover, but again the horn should easily cover up the bell sound.

John C.

[tehachapifan]

Sounds great! I also turn the horn up and the prime mover down, but only down to a level where it still sounds good. There is also a horn selection with that file that sounds really loud and even has a bit of an echo sound to it, making it sound even louder. I can't remember now which horn it is and I'm not sure if it is correct for SP, but it still sounds the best to me.

Also, when I first played around with turning the horn up, I noticed a bit of a crackling noise when I sounded it. I first thought I was overpowering the speakers with them all the way up but then I found a write-up that attributed some crackling noises to the air chamber/baffle not being air-tight. I simply applied more ACC all the way around the baffle joints and the crackling disappeared. What was really cool is the sound quality got even better and I believe even louder.

[carlso]

I love all this interaction, that's what a forum should be about, helping each other and I thank you all as I am learning a lot. Here is another short video after making the changes John suggested. In fact I turned the prime mover and bell level below John's suggested level. I will be messing with CV's much more, I am sure.

/>
I think it sounds better and yes Russ I intend to play with the horn some more, I just  thought the Leslie M3 was SP style. Actually I may be wasting time in trying to get more volume. Most all of the running will be on club layout during our annual weekly Fair schedule. When you have 70 - 80 children in the layout room you can't hear much of anything anyway. But that is what it is all about, trying to hook some young people into the model railroad world. Right ? ? ?

carl

[jdcolombo]

Carl, you'd be surprised how many of those kids will react to the horn (and bell).   Our N-Trak club does open-houses at our local library, and even when the room is packed and the ambient noise level high, when I blow the Nathan 5-chime on my GP9's, kids will swivel their heads and look (usually surprised . . . ).   Their hearing is better than ours, particularly at the higher frequencies, and they seem able to pick out stuff like this from the background noise with ease.

John C.

[carlso]

Well here is the SD-9 without the ESU sound decoder. As you can see in some of the jpeg's above there were way too many wires to cram under the shell. I put an ESU Lokpilot decoder in ( it runs well ) and will install the sound unit / speaker in the next one to be done soon. I shall remove more of the frame in the center above the motor cradle and, for sure, shorten the wires. the photo has highlighted some "fix" spots, such as the cab. All the light package is from Alvin, Wutter, and require some real careful work to get on right, especially for 76 year hold hands that could be hired by a local bar to shake the drinks. Hope you enjoy and I welcome any comments especially any pointing out an obvious boo boo that i have not seen.

Carl