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TTS sound decoders


baz47

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I have 2 schools class loco's that are fitted with TTS sound decoders, St Pauls has movement but no sound and Seven Oaks has neither, where can I purchase new sound decoders as I can't find them anywhere

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Hornby don't do them anymore, why I do not know. As I am always saying they are the same hardware with just a different set of software loaded. I gather Hornby has to order a batch at a time, so I imagine at the moment they see no market for that flavour of TTS decoder, so they have not ordered a new batch. This might be a long shot but have you thought of contacting Hornby Customer Service, they might be able to help.

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What goes around usually comes around, so you may find a re-run at some point in time.

In the meantime have you tried resetting the ones you have as they may be OK.

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The clue being if it is a 21-pin original decoder or 8-pin TTS decoder.

The ESU decoder will have a 100-ohm speaker whilst the TTS decoder will have an 8-ohm speaker.

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Suffix X means DCC-Fitted and XS means ESU Sound-Fitted.

XS were all 21-pin.

Hornby ESU sound has been around for a long time using their own sound files, so you wont find them on the ESU download site.

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I have two Hornby RnnnnXS locos, both are 21 pin ESU Loksound. One a V4 and the other a V3.5 and both purchased brand new in 2013.

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Normally if an ESU sound decoder fails, the company normally does a deal where they replace the broken decoder with a new one for the cost of £30.00, but it doesn't cover this early version, as I found out recently. They also use a 100 ohm loudspeaker which is unusual. Hornby also used them on the City of Sheffield Coronation class.

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I believe "sound" was in its very early days so perhaps that explains the 100ohms speaker. I have City of Sheffield which I received as a gift in 2008 - the "speaker technology" has moved ahead in leaps and bounds since that time. I have several early "XS" models but have never opened them up.

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100 ohm speaker was only used by the v3/3.5 from memory and the v4.0 used a 4 ohm but could drive an 8 ohm.

A problem is would (or even could) Hornby provide these early XS loco sound files for a user to reblow a dead decoder given the user had an ESU programmer to hand.

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I got the opinion when I was repairing one initially fitted to a Bachmann that Loksound v3.5 sound decoders were an obsolete item. When I contacted South Western about a replacement, I was told they no longer support this version and don't do the cheap (£30.00) fix for it either. This is where you send them your old one and they send you a new one. I even contacted the German Headquarters and got roughly the same response. When I was looking at the decoder trying to figure out why the input diodes had just blown, I did notice all the "hot" components were on the underside and very near the 21 pin connector, which is not so good as it doesn't get much cooling, I think they have fixed it on their later designs. So basically while it is working leave it alone, once it fails, bin it. In my case I had nothing to lose, as even if I blew it up trying to fix it, I had lost nothing.

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  • 10 months later...

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