I picked up one of these units in my LHS today on a lark. He had one running with a steam diorama and it caught my 'ear. I bought the diesel unit - hooked it up as per instructions to my Control Master 20 and find it somewhat interesting enough. I am running DC analog. (My 8 year old winces and/or jumps whenever he hears the "coupling sound" particularly. Sounds like an auto wreck.) We ran an operating session together - each taking turns with the throttle and sound controls. So the question - The programming of the sound or synchronization of the acceleration or deceleration of loco speed is not explained well enough in the instructions to program. Anyone have one and can explain it to me. The steam version worked so well in the store.
Was the one in the store running on DC or DCC? There is not much you can program with DC analog. You can only select the start voltage of the diesel rumble and choose between several bells and horns. The full compliment of sounds and range of throttle sound syncronization is only programable with DCC. I don't know if the web instructions are any better than what you have, but they explain it reasonably well. http://www.modelrectifier.com/resources/trainsound/0001022_0001023.pdf
MRC makes or has made several different versions of this product. I believe I have an early generation diesel unit (DCC only with NO button box) and the currently available steam unit with the button box for DC or DCC. The steam unit is straight forward and seems to work ok with either DC or DCC. The Chuff rate is not well synced but that is tunable. The Diesel unit on the other hand has a number of issues that I've yet to resolve, due in part to a lack of time. The issues there are: 1. Setting the address from 03 to a different address has not yet been successful. 2. The sound is way cheesy and unsuitable to me, it takes a vivid imagination to think it is a diesel engine of any type. The only real decent sound is the horn. 3. There does not appear to be a way to stop sound from the thing without disconnecting it. With the number of issues on the Diesel unit, I rather suspect it is more of a set of product problems than anything else. I plan to use the Steam unit on my Christmas G Scale as it will be much cheaper than a Phoenix system which is a sound only decoder anyway.
Joe Daddy, Have you figured out yet how to set the address to something other than 3? I am really frustrated with the unit and Frank at MRC is overworked and irritable with customers asking questions. Help Charlie
