RMweb Gold Savoyard Posted April 26, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted April 26, 2012 I have noticed that Bachmann are now charging £ 232.55 for a sound fitted Class 37 which is £142 more than a non-sound version. Current price of Loksound Chips is £99, so a premium of £43 pounds to have it factory fitted! I think Hornby differences are similar. Both companies will pay a lot less than £98 for their chips, so are we being taken for a train ride? Peter Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
SRman Posted April 26, 2012 Share Posted April 26, 2012 You are also paying for the labours of the supplier of the British sounds. ESU don't have most of the required sounds for UK trains. Bachmann generally use South West Digital as their sound supplier so you have to include their labour costs in recording and editing the sounds - call it a licence fee, if you like. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium newbryford Posted April 26, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 26, 2012 You are also paying for the labours of the supplier of the British sounds. ESU don't have most of the required sounds for UK trains. Bachmann generally use South West Digital as their sound supplier so you have to include their labour costs in recording and editing the sounds - call it a licence fee, if you like. Checking the current SWD price list, they're charging £98.60 for a v4 decoder plus £6.20 for a 4ohm speaker to the general public. Presumably SWD will be charging Bachmann less for bulk purchases. Or are SWD ripping Bachmann off? If anyone wants a sound decoder fitting to the current crop of "sound ready" chassis, I'll do it for less than £43 provided you buy the decoder............... Cheers, Mick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady_Ava_Hay Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 SWD do NOT supply Bachmann with chips. ESU supply direct. It is rumoured that SWD sourced and recorded the sound projects that Bachmann use. It is entirely possible that SWD receive royalties but they and ESU have maintained a discreet silence about the whole matter. There is no official tie up between ESU and SWD apart from the fact that SWD are listed as the principal ESU agent and importer for the UK but even that is open to all sorts of interpretation as it is illegal in this country to give or sell sole rights to a product and there is nothing to prevent any other dealer ordering from ESU direct. As to the OP, it is entirely possible to source an ESU sound decoder wherever and at whatever price and with a choice of sound project to suit but Bachmann and indeed Hornby have to offer warranties and back up service on a complex product which is in a market populated by enthusiastic amateurs and a few competing dealers offering different versions of the same loco. There is also the dealer mark up to consider and this will affect the end user price as well. It is this manufacturer ingress into the sound decoder market that has transformed it as predicted by me and many others some few years ago and without it, the UK market would be very much smaller than it is. Do remember that the vast majority of the model railway market is populated by people who are completely amazed by sound and would not contemplate buying a loco and fitting sound to it. A percentage of this market is wealthy enough to not question too closely the cost of a prestigious product such as this. This vast majority is not well represented by the membership of this forum any more than the majority of this forum read and subscribe to the DCC sound section of this forum. Once again the pyramid effect applies and a commercial organisation pitches it's prices around what it can get away with and loyalty to a smallish band of customers who value the product enough to pay for it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
cassey jones Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 Peter, You may find that the price is the top line [RRP as it used to be called] - dealers are offering these loco's with a discount of 15 - 20% off this price - once stocks arrive? As for SWD - they do supply all the Bachmann sounds ! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold PaulRhB Posted April 27, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted April 27, 2012 As pointed out above once you apply the shop discounts there's usually no difference and many I've seen are cheaper, the current 37 with sound for £155 I saw a couple of weeks back. If you want to see premiums LGB used to charge a 300 premium with sound from the factory and you could buy the chips direct from Massoth, their supplier, for 160 so a whopping 140 for plugging it in in the factory! They didn't even have to take the body off! They now only charge a 20 premium. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
leopardml2341 Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 Peter, You may find that the price is the top line [RRP as it used to be called] - dealers are offering these loco's with a discount of 15 - 20% off this price - once stocks arrive? As for SWD - they do supply all the Bachmann sounds ! I bought a Bachmann Peak (D27) from a well known supplier at a reduced price - I also bought reduced functionality - seemingly (as advised by others) highly likely a v3.5 Sound Project on a V4.0 Loksound chip - reduced price or not there's no excuses for that ? That's more of a concern to me (new to dcc) than a fitting charge. Rgds Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium newbryford Posted April 27, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted April 27, 2012 When the v4 was first released, the sound projects that had been developed for v3.5 decoders were simply uploaded to v4's, before the projects had been sufficiently upgraded (i.e. completely rewritten) to use the full capabilities of the v4. This may be the "reduced functionality" that you mention. Even now, how many factory fitted v4's from Bachmann and Hornby are just ex-v3.5 projects? I only have one v4 decoder (so far), obtained via a Bachmann factory sound Class 66 - it's not too different from previous v3.5 66's and will probably head to legomanbiffo for updating to his excellent v4 66 project. More worrying to me with the change of speaker from 100ohm to 4ohm and that I may install a v3.5 decoder in a loco fitted with a 4ohm speaker and release the magic smoke. Although I appreciate that 4ohm gives us better sounds and options for other speakers. Cheers, Mick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lochnagar Posted April 27, 2012 Share Posted April 27, 2012 I'll be using legomanbiffo's sound in my locos (where available), his class 20 is awesome for starters. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold tetsudofan Posted April 28, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted April 28, 2012 Looking at Roco stuff this year it's interesting to note that the premium between a sound-fitted loco and non-sound-fitted loco has narrowed this year. Will have to get out lasts year's catalogue to compare this years prices to last years prices to get some better understanding of how prices have changed - have non-sound locos got dearer or sound locos cheaper...... Keith Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
gridwatcher Posted April 29, 2012 Share Posted April 29, 2012 I have noticed that Bachmann are now charging £ 232.55 for a sound fitted Class 37 which is £142 more than a non-sound version. Current price of Loksound Chips is £99, so a premium of £43 pounds to have it factory fitted! I think Hornby differences are similar. Both companies will pay a lot less than £98 for their chips, so are we being taken for a train ride? Peter Yes! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThaneofFife Posted May 11, 2012 Share Posted May 11, 2012 the £140-155 sound locos wont be around for long so grab them while you sit on the fence.......snooze and lose as they say. i do wonder if we will see a similar situation as Hornby with their old Lima tooled stuff repeated here with sound decoders long after the original R&D work has been paid for a 1000 times over etc. will they still just crank them out at around £100 a pop when really the physical hardware is pennies and we are being asked to continue paying a oner every time (well give or take). wouldnt it be interesting to watch esu's/SWDs prices fall if we had a new kid on the block offering decoders for say £50? its like gas, one forecourt drops their price then the one across the road follows like a lemming to keep market share yet with the current monopoly weve got no chance. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
silverlink Posted May 16, 2012 Share Posted May 16, 2012 I have noticed that Bachmann are now charging £ 232.55 for a sound fitted Class 37 which is £142 more than a non-sound version. Current price of Loksound Chips is £99, so a premium of £43 pounds to have it factory fitted! I think Hornby differences are similar. Both companies will pay a lot less than £98 for their chips, so are we being taken for a train ride? Peter With ref above YES! we certainty are. If I buy a Loksound V4 complete with downloaded sound from Olivias Trains it will cost me £100 inc postage and that is retail. Now I don't think for one minute that Bachmann will be paying anything like that for same & as for fitting all you are doing extra to the normal 21pin fitted chassis is adding a speaker which with Bachmann is two screws & two blobs of solder for speaker wires. The price of the loco as such will be same as the chassis is the same for either sound or non sound as it is already prepared for adding speaker. As said earlier all we need is someone to offer a sound decoder at a reasonable price & then stand back and watch the prices drop. silverlink Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lady_Ava_Hay Posted May 17, 2012 Share Posted May 17, 2012 all we need is someone to offer a sound decoder at a reasonable price & then stand back and watch the prices drop. silverlink Indeed yes and there are innumerable products on the market that offer a lower price. All of them are inferior in one way or another which is why Bachmann and Hornby have eschewed these cheaper offerings. What is needed is sufficient increase in the size of the discerning market so that quality outweighs volume. Then the price will start to drop as Bachmann and Hornby are forced to look very carefully at the quality of both chip project and installation. While the volume market just buys it because it is 'amazing', we stand no chance at all. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium newbryford Posted May 17, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted May 17, 2012 The appearance of Zimo decoders with UK sounds was championed as the kick-start to ESU dropping prices, but that doesn't appear to have happened. All it seems to have done is make ESU create the V4. Maybe Hornby and Bachmann could go down the ESU Select route and supply sound decoders with r-t-r that can't be reprogrammed - but are cheaper than a standard Loksound, as is happening in the US. But with ESU still keeping the V4 as a higher end product. Cheers, Mick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
legomanbiffo Posted May 17, 2012 Share Posted May 17, 2012 In my view the problem with RTR sound is not so much the price, it is the value. If people were filled with pleasure every time they played with their new purchase the high price would soon be forgotten. They clearly are not, and it isn't. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffalo Posted May 17, 2012 Share Posted May 17, 2012 On Peter's original question, surely it's no different from factory fitted extras in any other market? For example, if you buy a car and include a factory/dealer fitted extra, it will invariably cost you far more than if you source a similar item separately and fit it yourself. It's just that the manufacturers know that most people don't know, couldn't do it or can't be bothered. Then there's the question of warranties... Nick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jim s-w Posted May 17, 2012 Share Posted May 17, 2012 Hi All I think people are looking too deeply into this based in some way on they think they know what things cost. When sound first came out I looked at getting unprogrammed loksound decoders from tonys trains. They were about half the cost of the SWD ones (which at the time were the only option). Factor in that Tony's would be making a profit and ESU (after distibution) would also and you quicly realise the cost of the decoder is practically nothing. The simple answer to the OP's question is that its what the market will pay (which is the case for pretty much anything we buy). The only way to get the price down is to stop buying them. Cheers Jim Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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