Hi everyone. OK, here's how I did the ESU LokSound transplant in my BLI PA-1's (video of the results is posted in this thread: http://www.trainboard.com/highball/...n-2-vs-esu-loksound-in-an-n-scale-pa-1.92284/). When you remove the shell (remove the front coupler, then spread the sides of the shell and tug lightly on one of the trucks to pull the chassis free from the shell - don't pull too hard), you'll see the following: You can see the round speaker in its molded enclosure in the back; the Paragon sound board takes up the entire middle. First step is to remove the decoder board. It is held in place by two small screws at the front of the board. Remove those, lift the board up, and disconnect the plugs (there are two of them) to remove the board. Here's a photo of the chassis with the board removed: You will also need to cut the various wires from the micro plugs and remove the plastic cab detail part that is held on with a small screw. Next, remove the speaker enclosure. It is attached to the chassis with two screws, one at the front and one at the rear. Once the enclosure is removed, pry up the top back plastic "lid" that seals the enclosure from the speaker (it is lightly glued; I found that a small screwdriver slipped between the speaker and lid easily pried it up). Then remove the speaker (you'll need to clip the wires). When you are done, you will have an empty enclosure, lid and speaker. Discard the lid and speaker; you will re-use the enclosure. A Knowles Donau 11x15mm speaker will just fit inside the enclosure. You will need to sand down the inside of the enclosure sides just a bit to get the Donau to fit. I drilled two tiny holes in the front of the enclosure for the speaker wires to exit the enclosure. The speaker itself should be flush with the top of the enclosure, and I used some thick CA to glue it to the sides of the enclosure even though it is a very tight fit. Here's a photo of the Donau in the enclosure with the speaker wires threaded out the front side: Next, I sealed off the top of the enclosure with 1/32" sheet lead. Remember to have the lead (or styrene if you prefer that) overlap the edge of the speaker to get a complete airtight seal. Next, I glued some 6mm-wide strips of .040 styrene across the frame to protect the front and rear flywheels from getting hit by wires from the installation. Then I reinstalled the speaker enclosure. I used a dab of gel CA to attach the ESU LokSound to the top of the motor housing and the front styrene strip. The wires for the LokSound face forward. I also prepped the wiring for the headlight and Mars light LED's. Each of these LED's has a black and a gray wire. The black wire is the positive connection (blue wire from the decoder); I stripped about 1/8" of insulation from each of these, twisted them together, and soldered the twist. They will get soldered to the blue wire from the decoder). The gray wire is the negative connection (white wire for the headlight; yellow wire for the Mars light). I used a 1/8-watt 2200-ohm dropping resistor on each gray wire, and insulated the joint with heat-shrink tubing. You can see the orientation of the decoder and the two dropping resistors at the front of the chassis in the following photo: Now just wire everything up. The trucks are hard-wired, gray on the fireman's side; black on the engineer's side. Wire the gray truck wires together with the black wire from the decoder, and the black truck wires to the red wire. Insulate the joint with heat-shrink tubing. There are also black and gray wires from the motor (BLI used a lot of black and gray wire for its wiring!). The orange decoder wire goes to the black motor lead; the gray decoder wire goes to the gray decoder lead. I also wired up three 16v 220uf tantalum chip caps as a keep alive. Remember that the positive of the caps goes to the decoder blue wire; in this install, I used an extra piece of orange wire to do the positive cap connection; the negative side of the cap is wired to a pad on the back side of the LokSound at the edge of the board directly opposite the blue wire pad. I used a piece of green wire for this, and if you zoom in on the following photo, you should be able to just barely see a green wire soldered to a pad between one of the brown speaker wires and the orange motor wire: That's it. Test the installation, re-install the plastic cab detail and shell, and you are done. John C.
Does the ESU decode use BEMF to increase and decrease the prime mover speed according to load? This is one feature I really enjoy!
Hi John, Just out of curiosity, what didn't you like about the Paragon sound decoder? Or was it just a matter of standardizing on a single manufacturer for the sound decoders? --- Edit Sorry, didn't check out the link. Questions are answered....
Nice work John. I have too many BLI units to even consider replacing the sound decoder. I might just try to replace the speaker. I have a multitude of the Knowles Donau speakers and will try to replace several factory installed speakers to see how the factory installed decoders sound in various BLI units. Having fun with it........ Shades
Shades, Notice that the round speaker I took out says "50 ohms" on it. The Knowles Donau is an 8-ohm speaker. It is possible that the audio amplifier in the Paragon will blow up trying to output to an 8-ohm load, which requires far more current than 50-ohm speaker. I probably wouldn't try just replacing the speaker unless I was prepared to go "all in" on an ESU transplant if the worst happens . . . (well, actually, if you DO blow up your Paragon, I know where you can get a used Paragon 2 decoder board cheap ) John C.
Thanks for the info John. I'll leave the factory speaker as is then.... At this point in time, I don't plan to change out the factory installed Paragon board. Stay cool and have fun with it... Shades
