Adding Sound

[trainguy42]

I recently purchased a Bachmann 2-6-6-2 loco with DCC on board but not sound. What is the easiest and most economical method for adding sound to this engine?

[Tomcat]

Well. It depends how much you want to spend on sound. The best sounds you can buy are either by adding a Soundtraxx (TM) Tsunami for a Logging Mallet or a ESU. Both give you perfect control on low speeds-something I do like that much-like most of us do.

The more economic way is to add a MRC Sheer brilliance decoder (which you could buy at Micromark at a reasonable price), but I have tried them - I wasn´t quite happy with the slow speed control, though.

ESU is fine, Soundtraxx is the stuff Bachmann uses on their sound equipped engines. They are perfect to me-sound great, give perfect control. But you would need to add a 8pin plug and solder the two purple (..?) wires to the speaker. Using a Soundtraxx speaker baffle gives a better sound. But please keep in mind, that the aftermarket Tsunamis are slightly a bit bigger than the ones they deliver to bachmann.
They should fit on top of the Bachmann electronics.

Cheers, Tom

[Steve Magee]

I installed a QSI Revolution U Articulated Steam decoder in my artic, along with a spare MRC speaker. I did however use the wood load (and matching diamond stack) to allow the decoder to project into the cavity in the base of the wood load. Sound is very passable with speaker sealed with silicon in its recess and the wood load similarly sealed to the tender. And I personally favour the "operatability" of the QSI - with heaps of momentum the F7 braking function is very prototypical, and the "sound of power" (which I prefer to call Digital Cut Off) also adds an element of realism in the operation, cranking the chuffs up when slogging up grade at low speed, or drifting down grade with just the clank of the rods.

However .....

I recently pulled the tender to bits again to see if I could fit a QSI 1.57" Hi-Base speaker. I have these in three of my other locomotives and really like the "depth" of sound it gives, especially to the chuff. But I got side tracked. Looking close I could see that the board the QSI speaker is plugged into via an 8-pin harness is actually a piggy back, sitting atop a board with a 21-pin connector. This connector is used quite a bit by our European friends, and Zimo (who IMHO make some of the best decoders going) have a 21-pin MX640 sound decoder, which intrigues me so much (have a look at the definition for the MX640 on Decoder Pro and you will see what I mean) that when my train budget allows I think I will experiment with. You might like to try this as well as the 21-pin board on its own provides much more room for a decoder in the tender shell.

Steve Magee
Newcastle NSW Australia