TTS Decoders

[james_nelmes]

A couple of questions about the new TTS decoders.

1. The pictures on the Hornby website suggests some speakers are rectangular as well as round, whilst re-sellers such as Hattons show them as all round. - What is the truth?

2. Do the TTS decoders come with a speaker enclosure? - I know some locos will have the moulding in the chassis to take a speaker, but for other locos and retro-fit, the speaker might need to be fixed to the chassis and ideally in an enclosure. I know Hornby made some enclosures in the past - are they going to be available again - it would not hurt sales!

[96RAF]

Answers

1. The shape of the speaker is applicable to the model it fits. Some have round mounts and some have rectangular.

 

2. Yes they do, along with screws and basic instructions for installation. The enclosure is necessary for the acoustics and should be installed, in most cases it actually holds the speaker in place as the enclosure has the screw holes.

 

In the event you have a round speaker and no enclosure then you can make one from an empty Humbrol plastic paint pot, just cut off the lid part and make a notch for the speaker wires. Be sure to use black/white-tak to seal any holes against sound leakage from back to front of speaker for best acoustics.

Rob

[Percybigun]

Another thing about TTS to note is the 2 wires from decoder to speaker are little over 1" long, not a problem for diesel/electric loco's, but for steam loco's with tender you have to cut the wires and extend them (i.e. Soldering). The only dcc ready steamers i know of with the pcb socket in the tender are 4-4-0's, so in theory TTS fitting is literally plug and play On the 4-4-0's.

i recently fitted TTS to a hornby dcc ready A4, i had to extend the speaker wires and found that it was a very tight squeeze to mount the decoder in the front of the loco, because the TTS decoder is much bigger than a normal (non-sound) decoder.

also i understand that some dcc ready large diesels have very little room inside to accommodate TTS, thats not to say its impossible, just more faff than you might expect.

[96RAF]

The TTS decoder is the same size as the R8249 decoder, much smaller than say the Sapphire decoder, so no great problem to find space for. I fitted one into a GWR Class 2721 coal hole and that was with a shrink sleeve fitted as well.

 

I struggled just a little bit putting TTS sound into my R2645X Class 56 which has revolving fans and a hefty chassis, but I found I could mount the round speaker over the bogie tower at the opposite end to the fans by sitting it on a piece of plasticard to isolate it from the mechanics, then I sealed it in with ...tak stuff. The decoder sat in the usual space provided on this DCC fitted loco.

Rob