Friends, Just picked up an A/B pair of Athearn F3 units from eBay (non-sound version). Has anyone updated these for sound? If so, any tips on speaker selection or on lighting? I had an TSU-1000 decoder for this model on the shelf, so planning to go that route for the decoder. Thanks, -Bob T.
Keith Robinson has very nice sugar cube type speakers that sound fantastic. He's great at installing decoders, lighting and speakers. He did an excellent job on an SD40-2 for me. I'm sure he'll chime in and help you out with advice.
Bob, that is an easy installation with the TSU-1000 but far easier with the TSU-GN1000 I have a speaker enclosure that I designed that fits above the rear truck with a 20mm high bass speaker inside. Contact me via PM for more advice.
Thanks Keith, I will take you up on your offer (and send a PM). I have one TSU-GN1000 already, and would very much like to see your speaker design in detail. How about lighting approach? -Bob T.
Many Thanks to All. Keith provided the speakers and enclosures (a perfect solution), I grabbed a couple of TSU-GN1000 decoders and these are running great on the Crawford and Cherokee. -Bob T.
Keith, The sound quality is quite good. When I built the enclosure that you sent, I was careful to close up all of the seams with the polystyrene epoxy. I have been tweaking sound settings in Decoder Pro/JMRI and am most happy with custom settings using the equalizer. In particular, I have been trying to get the two units to sound just a bit different such that it is clear there are two different engines there. The speaker/enclosure gives good lower end response and plenty of volume. Maybe I can post a video once I have settled on a final configuration. -Bob T.
