TTS speaker fitment

[Nick73]

hi just had a TTS sound decoder  class A1/A3 arrive for my flying scotsman and there's no room in the body for the speaker where do they normally fit?

Nick

[96RAF]

Standard size speakers are designed to fit in the temder of a TTs ready loco.

As stated in the retro-fit kit instructions other models may require the speaker wires extending into the temder or a different size speaker fitted.

[Nick73]

Thanks for the reply i did wonder whether it went in the tender 

[96RAF]

What some folk do is purchase a TTS tender base to make the job easier (see service sheet 388), especially if one has a tender with a dummy ringfield motor installed like service sheets 315 and 326. It will also pay if doing that to wire in a four pin plug from the loco to match (Item 10 of SS388).

[ColinB]

Normally, it is easier to throw the Hornby speaker away and buy a small "sugar cube" speaker to fit under the smokebox. If I remember rightly, there is a reasonable amount of room there. Normally what I do with mine, is go look at the "youChoos" site at speakers (I say "YouChoos" because they have a large range of speakers with sizes) and from that figure what size one will fit. If your tender has pickups, then it is sometimes easier to move the DCC socket to the tender as RAF96 stated, but if you don't have tender pickups and you don't intend fitting them, then it is probably not worth the effort.

[Mar Mallard]

Just to be clear which Flying Scitsman do you have?  If it is more modern with DCC socket in tender, then the fit is standard and simple.  Simply remove tender body, plug in decoder and place standard speaker face down beneath the metal plate at the bottom.  You have to undo metal plate.  Take speaker out of plastic case obviously or it will not fit.  I learned this by observing how factory fitted TTS models were done.  If you happen to have one copy that.

 

If yours is an older model with a socket in the loco body or no socket present then there is more work and some soldering, at least of a new speaker, sugar cube as Colin B says.  If no socket I give it to my local shop to convert, personally. Depends on your skill set.

 

I seem to remember old FSs were tender drive.  If so this is much more of a job but I have had my local shop convert all my tender drive Thomas and Friends locos to DCC sound with sugar cubes in the tender.  However they all had DCC sockets in tender as well, which old FSs might not have.

[96RAF]

And some have the tender full of dummy ringfield motor to add to the challenge.

[Mar Mallard]

And some have the tender full of dummy ringfield motor to add to the challenge.

 

Yes, like my Henry has (with black 5 body).  Socket was in loco and Roxley Models fitted Black 5 sound in body with sugar cube.  Must have been a v. small one but sounds great.

[ColinB]

Looking at the original post, it has got to be the newer type. The old ringfield motor based ones have so much room in them you could nearly fit the round speaker. I suspect it is the one just before Hornby moved the DCC socket to the tender. It might be like my renumbered  Railroad A4 which is loco driven but has the tender full of the ringfield drive without the armature. Either way, it is either fit a sugar cube speaker in the smokebox or buy the later tender bottom and rewire the socket so it is now in the tender, assuming it is not the Railroad version with the dummy ringfield motor in it.

[Mar Mallard]

Looking at the original post, it has got to be the newer type. The old ringfield motor based ones have so much room in them you could nearly fit the round speaker. I suspect it is the one just before Hornby moved the DCC socket to the tender. It might be like my renumbered  Railroad A4 which is loco driven but has the tender full of the ringfield drive without the armature. Either way, it is either fit a sugar cube speaker in the smokebox or buy the later tender bottom and rewire the socket so it is now in the tender, assuming it is not the Railroad version with the dummy ringfield motor in it.

Agreed!  Slightly off topic but have you ever felt the need to remove the old redundant motor housing from the tender?  I am in two minds in the way that it seems pointless but I rather like the weight, as opposed to the extremely light modern tenders with just dcc sockets in them.

[96RAF]

If you were adept on the tools you could mill out the dummy housing to take the round speaker and blank off the back of it for decent accoustics.

[ColinB]

On the renumbered Mallard, I did at one point think about buying a new tender bottom as they are quite cheap, and removing the ringfield body.  Trouble was the existing tender top doesn't fit properly. Anyway, as someone said it does add more weight and means the tender pickups work properly. Trouble I have lately is I add sound to a loco, generally when I can afford it, but I can never remember quite how I did it. Plus if I have decided to replace the tender bottom with a updated one, by the time I have finished it looks like that was the original fit. Like the Tornedo, initially I fitted it in the loco, then realised it ran like a dog without tender pickups so I added them using Hornby parts, then moved everything to the tender as I had to make the connection to the loco anyway.

[Nick73]

Thanks for the advice guys its got the 8 pin socket in the loco there's nothing in the tender and the speaker wire will need lengthing to fit into the tender but also have a problem with the 8 pin socket the sound doesn't always work but if you push or wiggle the 8 pin plug it works and the loco struggles to move a inch then stops i feel so out of my depth think I'm best to send it to hornby repair shop and get them to look at it 

[DerekGH]

due to issues with the size of the TTS speaker I’ve decided to use small rectangular speaker in all my Locos.