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Bachmann 37 With Factory Fitted Sound


Graham Radish
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My mrs just bought me this loco in the colas livery, its a lovely loco but the cab lights are not directional for some reason, theres a switch at the bottom though to turn both ends off, is there any CV setting i should know about to change this?

also does anyone here know what type of decoder this has?

 

I think its a loksound v4 but not 100% sure

cheers.

Edited by Graham Radish
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Its got a loksound v4 after some investigation, the sounds are actually  really nice, has various startup sequences. the only thing im going to do to it is change the cablights to their proper colours and fit an earthmover2 speaker, a piece of pvc tape over the rear cab light pcb connection in the loco will sort the problem of the rear cab light, or i might have a look inside and see if there is a couple of decoder functions spare, yea it was programmed by southwest digital in portishead bristol, i live in weston super mare so might give them a ring

 

V4

Edited by Graham Radish
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The decoder will have plenty of functions available for full directional cab lights (and independant tail light control). Its just a matter of actually wiring the lights to the function outputs separately.

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There are plenty of wiring scematics showing the output pins etc. for 21-pin deciders on the Internet, but if you have the August Hornby Magazine, they did a sound-fitting article for the Bachmann/LT Museum LUL S Stock, complete with diagrams showing both sides of an ESU LokSound 5 decoder.

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I should add to my previous post: my preference when adding separate functions is to solder to the base of the pins for a 21 pin connection, rather than to the decoder, as this means the decoder remains removable should the need arise. With more functions than those available from the pins, then there is little alternative to soldering directly to the pads on the decoder. There are breakout boards available, but they add bulk to the decoder mounting and the space may not be available for this, particularly in the class 37.

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Yea thanks m8t, ive just changed the cablights to warm white looks so much better, i think its just a matter of re-routing some wiring from the lights to the locos pcb, im also going to tone them down, theyre currently fitted with 2k resistors for the cabs theyre a bit too bright, the dimming functions on every decoder ive used, dcc concepts/zimo/lenz/esu all have pwm flickering issues, going to change them to 4.7k, also going to drop the front yellow lights down a notch as atm theyre overpowering the main white headlight. lovely model though i must say it weighs a ton

Edited by Graham Radish
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3 hours ago, SRman said:

I should add to my previous post: my preference when adding separate functions is to solder to the base of the pins for a 21 pin connection, rather than to the decoder, as this means the decoder remains removable should the need arise. With more functions than those available from the pins, then there is little alternative to soldering directly to the pads on the decoder. There are breakout boards available, but they add bulk to the decoder mounting and the space may not be available for this, particularly in the class 37.

Ok i got my magnifying glass out again, the decoder is an ESU Loksound v5, i've got to say these are absolutely beautiful to work on, damn ill never go back to N gauge now, i'm in love lol, 

 

Ive done replacing the 2k resistors with 4.7kohm now the cab lighting is absolutely perfect at full brightness, the lighting circuits also have built in mini stayalive capacitors (to stop flicker 0.3secs) the pcb is laid out lovely you can pretty much get to everything without messing about, ive changed the yellow front and rear marker led resistors to 4.7k as well, now the main headlights are twice as bright which is how it should be really. right, tomorrow ill get cracking and wire up all the lights independently to use different decoder functions.

 

this is the exact decoder:

 

http://www.esu.eu/en/products/loksound/loksound-5-loksound-5-dcc/

 

 

Edited by Graham Radish
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On 06/09/2020 at 02:41, SRman said:

I should add to my previous post: my preference when adding separate functions is to solder to the base of the pins for a 21 pin connection, rather than to the decoder, as this means the decoder remains removable should the need arise. With more functions than those available from the pins, then there is little alternative to soldering directly to the pads on the decoder. There are breakout boards available, but they add bulk to the decoder mounting and the space may not be available for this, particularly in the class 37.

Hey i tell you what mate i dont think ill even need to change the speaker, did a bit of experimentation with the factory speaker last night, on the back of the speaker i covered all the holes with insulation tape apart from one nearest the input wires, and widened the hole on the speaker mount to let more sound through (cut out the exact shape of the speaker), doing this its now acting like a sound chamber lol, doing this simple thing makes the speaker sound so much better i cant believe it. all im going to do now is add a sugarcube as a tweeter fitted with a 2 uF capacitor

 

This is the first time ever ever used a loksound chip, i used to be a strictly zimo guy, but damn this thing is on a whole new level, 12 function outputs, 8 random sound or logic function generators, independent speaker support, more lighting settings loads of editable functions for even diy stayalives, etc... im blown away by this chip its incredible

Edited by Graham Radish
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4 hours ago, Graham Radish said:

Hey i tell you what mate i dont think ill even need to change the speaker, did a bit of experimentation with the factory speaker last night, on the back of the speaker i covered all the holes with insulation tape apart from one nearest the input wires, and widened the hole on the speaker mount to let more sound through (cut out the exact shape of the speaker), doing this its now acting like a sound chamber lol, doing this simple thing makes the speaker sound so much better i cant believe it. all im going to do now is add a sugarcube as a tweeter fitted with a 2 uF capacitor

 

This is the first time ever ever used a loksound chip, i used to be a strictly zimo guy, but damn this thing is on a whole new level, 12 function outputs, 8 random sound or logic function generators, independent speaker support, more lighting settings loads of editable functions for even diy stayalives, etc... im blown away by this chip its incredible

 

 

 

Yes, sealing the speaker to create a sound chamber is always a good move. I have even made temporary sound chambers out of Blu-tack! :D  

I have sound decoders from ESU, Zimo, Hornby TTS and Soundtraxx Econami. It is swings and roundabouts comparing the ESU and Zimo, and depends on the quality of the sound project (generally being improved all the time), quality and combinations of speakers (sealed, of course), and even the version of the decoder (ESU 3.5 were good for their time, but hissy and with limited speaker choices compared to ESU 4 and 5). Cheaper ones like TTS and Econami are compromised, but still good value.

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7 hours ago, SRman said:

 

 

 

Yes, sealing the speaker to create a sound chamber is always a good move. I have even made temporary sound chambers out of Blu-tack! :D  

I have sound decoders from ESU, Zimo, Hornby TTS and Soundtraxx Econami. It is swings and roundabouts comparing the ESU and Zimo, and depends on the quality of the sound project (generally being improved all the time), quality and combinations of speakers (sealed, of course), and even the version of the decoder (ESU 3.5 were good for their time, but hissy and with limited speaker choices compared to ESU 4 and 5). Cheaper ones like TTS and Econami are compromised, but still good value.

I loaded up JMRI up earlier m8t, i tell you what just the headlight settings alone are so so good, just finished programming in all the automatic sounds, yea the loksound 3.5 chips were bit of an oddball, they needed very rare 100ohm oval drivers, the loksound5 handles 4ohms (louder), nice one on the experimentation on the sound chambers lol youre like me, a born tinkerer! i bet you could 3d print a bespoke chamber for the Bachmann models, either that or make one with some plastic sheets and poly cement. or even a delay line type of enclosure with plastic tubing.

 

I've noticed another thing, the sound quality is very very good, crisp and bassy, think theyre 16bit 32KHz which will easily saturates my hearing, thats what 16,000hz? 

 

Im finding this chip easier to work with, when i first loaded the pdf manual though i thought to myself, jesus this is gonna take forever to learn, lol, luckily jmri has made things very easy haha

 

 

Edited by Graham Radish
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14 hours ago, Richard Croft said:

On the v4 or select you only have 4 powered outputs so you can either have directional cab lights and reds and whites together. Or you can leave the cab lights disconnected but have the tail lights on a separate function so you can turn them off.  It doesn’t matter so much if you are keeping the switches anyway because you can still use them to turn the tail lights off and not rely on the decoder for it

 

regarding the speaker, sealing the one you have will improve it definitely, but I’m not sure that adding a sugarcube as a tweeter will help, I don’t think the 20x40 lacks treble anyway, it’s bass you want really

 

Richard

Ahh ok, around the top exhaust area it would be quite easy to drill the tiny holes with a pin vice and add a 10x8mm sugarcube firing upwards for a treble boost as ive heard the EM2 speakers roll off at about 9khz, you wouldnt see these holes as theyre recessed

 

Am going to relabel one of the bottom switches probably the cab switch to a stayalive switch, so i can switch the capacitor off when programming the chip

Edited by Graham Radish
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Ahh that sounds like the speaker is out of phase, you need to add a 2.2uF capacitor to the tweeter, this the makes the tweeter only deliver sounds from 8khz upwards, phase matters little then and both speakers must be 8ohm wired in parallel

 

speaker phase matters bigtime, if you have 2 locos on the same track out of phase both of them will sound terrible. Bachmann ought to really put markings on the pcb for this

 

I was watching some of your videos on youtube earlier mate, good collection of vids you have.

Edited by Graham Radish
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