Hello, my name is Tim. I am a fellow railway modeler from Russia. A friend of mine is a dcc engineer - he has a small team that produces sound dcc decoders. He is a well known manufacturer in Russia and in fact has done 3 successful projects with sound locomotive decoders. So far he has dcc sound decoders that fit into HO and N scale locomotives. These are NEM652, Plux16/12/8 and NEM651 decoders. Now his idea is to develop Next18 sound dcc to fit N scale and Z scale. But because the development process needs funding, he would like to study the demand first. I would be very grateful, if you could tell if Next18 is popular in the US. If we can see a demand, such a decoder can be made with the help of crowdfunding. We would need around 300 people wishing to purchase Next18 DCC sound decoder. At this point, the price can be around 75 USD, but it can be dropped further if more people purchase this. I am not giving any links since it's not an advertisement of services, but rather a research of the market. So what do you think?
There are only a couple of N Scale locos that have Next18 sockets in them (such as Scale Trains). The most popular and widely know manufacturers do not use them (Kato, Atlas, Intermountain, Fox Valley, etc). For Z, that is even more problematic since you do not have the space to meet the NEM 662 spec.
I model in Z Scale, and sound in Z is very desireable, but they would have to be regular wired decoders without a connector. So far no Z Scale locomotive has ever been produced with a connector that I am aware of. Z Scale locomotive releases are also so few and far between, with 1 or sometimes 2 new locos a year. Those new locos are almost always based off an existing mechanism with the same familiar motor/light board without any space for connectors. We replace that board with a decoder that matches the board in size and electrical contact points.
Here in the USA No manufacture even makes a Z scale Locomotive with a Next18 connector. So for Z scale I would have to say there is no interest in a decoder with the Next18 style connector. David
