I've been quite impressed with my Athearn Genesis challenger. How ever one thing I didn't like is the whistle and bell sounds. I'm planning to replace the Tsunami decoder I believe ( correct manufacture). I want to make my challenger sound more prototypical to the real 3985. I know other manufactures such as Lionel has done a superb job in matching the Challenger's sound on their O Guage run. Is there any way that I can customize or replace the sounds on my challenger? Here is perfect example done to a N scale Athearn Genesis Challenger. Although I've asked the user I hadn't gotten a reply. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL5Tutp0dyY&feature=channel_video_title
The whistle in that video is one of the pre-loaded whistles on the Athearn Challenger with Tsunami installed. If I recall correctly, it is not the default whistle (And I don't know why). Someone here may know directly, but if you have the Tsunami Challenger, look in the manual to see which CV changes the whistle type. If you have the MRC Challenger... then yeah, replace that decoder pronto.
I'm gonna second what Mark said. The decoders that came in the first series of both the Challenger and the Big Boy were MRC and the sounds SUCK. An easy way to tell if you have an MRC is decoder is this: do you have a little remote for it? If so, then it's an MRC decoder. IIRC the MRCs all came with them, but were ditched when they started putting Tsunami decoders in their locos.
You do not have to change decoders. I wasn’t happy with mine either until I accentually found a thread with all the details on how to set up the sound. I have to look for it because I don’t remember where I saw it, but don’t buy a new one before searching for changing sound settings.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that whistle sound is one of the options in the Tsunami controller. I didn't care for the whistle sound as delivered on my Challenger so I tried each of the optional whistles until I found that one. I still wasn't too happy with it - it didn't sound prototypical to me, but it was the best of the lot. Later, I was watching a video of the full size 3985 and realized that the whistle on the video was pretty close to the one on my model. I guess that I have to admit that I didn't really know what prototypical sounded like. Gerry
Would you happen to know the exact Tsunami Sound Decoder model? I may purchase it in the mere future.
Here is the link to the Tsunami Steam User's Guide: http://www.athearn.com/Content/PDF/steam_users_guide.pdf The whistle type is selected with CV 115. There are eight different whistles selectable by setting the CV to 0 through 7. Try them one at a time until you find one you like.
