Phoenix Sound Installation: LGB Ge4/4III Maienfeld Copyright Keith Yundt 2004 All Rights Reserved. 1) Background

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1 Phoenix Sound Installation: LGB Ge4/4III Maienfeld Copyright Keith Yundt 2004 All Rights Reserved 1) Background My first electric LGB locomotive purchase, which was responsible for my initial and ongoing interest in the RhB, was an LGB crocodile with sound. It quickly became the favourite locomotive at my household, especially loved by the children because of the sounds it made. Several years later I purchased a NIB but several year old set containing the #641 Ge4/4III and two coaches. Encouraged by John Bouck, who had previously completed the same installation, I decided to try my hand at installing a digital sound board. John was kind enough to me pictures of his installation, and steer me in the right direction with plenty of good advice. When my system arrived, I did a bench test only to find that it had been shipped with the Ge4/4II sound instead of the Ge4/4III. Once I phoned the supplier, the programming kit was mailed to me at no cost so I could download the proper sound myself. After completing the installation, I decided to purchase the sound programming CD for two reasons. First, it enabled me to customize the sound to exactly how I thought it should sound, which has proven to be interesting and fun, and second, my friend and neighbour is going to be getting a new Phoenix system for one of his engines so now we can share the programming kit. 2) Installation The first thing to do was to remove the bottom plate from the locomotive, in order to drill all the necessary holes for the speaker, the volume control, the computer port, and the reed switch. I was very happy to see that although the locomotive did not come equipped with sound, there was a raised outline of where the stock speaker would go, complete with mounting screw holes almost exactly where I needed them. This meant all I had to do was perforate the bottom to let the sound out and screw on the speaker. Here is the graph paper taped over the plate, allowing me to line up the holes better for centre-punching and drilling.

2 Here is the board after centrepunching, ready to be drilled out. I used a #25 drill for the grid. I was pleased to see that the plastic was quite thick, so it would not be weakened much by all the holes and would not need a protective screen over it either. The finished board after the holes were drilled. With my two-year-old turning the drill press and my eightyear-old helping align the drill, things turned out slightly less than perfect but still perfectly acceptable! Now on to the holes for the other appurtenances. Here is the bottom of the locomotive with the speaker plate removed. As you can see, the large weights and side rails on either side of the opening limited options a little for the remaining parts.

3 I decided to work on the mounting bracket for the reed switch next. John had built a box for his switches and this seemed like a good plan. I headed to my son s garage sale treasure trove box of goodies to see if there were any parts that I could easily adapt to suit, such as a plastic box off a broken toy. I saw something that I thought might work pretty well an old dial from a stereo which had given up its previous career as a result of childhood curiosity with a Phillips screwdriver. I figured that if I mounted it on the bottom with the reed switch mounted through the middle, it would not only support the reed switch but also look a bit like some sort of air/oil/water tank. The picture to the left shows where I planned to put the tank. In the pictures below a hole has been drilled to allow a light press fit which would permit me to adjust the height relative to the rails later if necessary. Phoenix recommended that the reed switch be located ¼ above the rails, and about ½ off center. Those dimensions turned out to work fine. I drilled a corresponding hole in the speaker plate to allow the reed switch and wires to pass through. Finally some semi-gloss black Krylon was applied and the tank was glued on.

4 Next two more holes were drilled for the computer access jack and the volume control switch. I mounted them between the air tanks so they would not be visible from the outside, but would still be accessible with the locomotive on the rails. Now it was time to put the guts together on the inside! Above is the final position of the battery pack and board. Following John s lead, I decided to pick up power from one of the power plugs at the end of the engine. I then routed the power wires alongside one of the ribbon cables. Other than some minor soldering, the rest was easy as it was just a matter of plugging in the wires according to the circuit diagram contained in the Phoenix manual. The two-sided foam tape provided in the kit worked fine for mounting the parts to the weight. It seemed secure enough and I tied some of the wires together where I thought they could be pinched. Now it was time to close things up and see if anything smoked or melted down!

5 Here are a couple of pictures of the finished product from the outside.

6 3) Fine tuning and programming Now the fun began! An initial power-up on my test track brought a sigh of relief, since everything worked as designed. The sound was awesome! It was obvious, however, that many of the stock configuration settings needed to be adjusted. I plugged in my laptop to the access port and fired up the Phoenix program. Some power to the board was required via the track power, in order to complete the connection. The handshake worked perfectly and it was time to play with the settings. I was pleasantly surprised at how many variables were available for manipulation. The user could set the total number of variables visible by selecting either basic, intermediate, or advanced choices. I figured it was best to start with the basics until I was close, then fine tune with the advanced settings. For example, the basic setting allowed a single change to the motor volume, while the advanced setting allowed me to change the volume setting of each step (eight in total) as well as the revup and rev-down volumes. I found this to be a great feature because I like to hear some suggestion that the motor is working harder during the startup acceleration. Some emphasis on winding down adds a little something too. Adjustments can also be made to the brake squeal and to horn/toot settings for both forward, reverse, and at crossings. Another nice feature is the ability to scale the sound according to voltage applied. In other words, you could adjust the sound to scale to 200% of the voltage so if you were typically operating at slow speeds you could have all the steps occur at the lower end of the voltage range. On the other hand, if you have a huge layout with lots of high speed running, you could select closer to 100% so you would still get some motor steps even at the higher speeds. Air compressor, fan, background track clickety-clacking are other things you can play with regarding volume or timing. There are also extensive menus for DCC and trigger configuration which I could go on forever about, but it s really best just to hook it up and experiment. I m sure all of us will end up configuring our locomotives to suit our own applications, and I can t imagine not having the CD after seeing what it can do. Now we can swap.config files too! I think Phoenix should ship this program with every single sound board, given the low cost of a mini-cd these days. My description of the variables above really only scratches the surface--you really have to see this to believe it. Needless to say it was a very happy day for myself and my family, and we all agreed that the sound system was a worthwhile investment that really brought the locomotive to life. Festina Lente! Keith Yundt Copyright Keith Yundt 2004 All Rights Reserved