Low Volume on FEF

I may have an answer for you. First I have to ask, is the chuff sound level lower than the whistle or bell? For example, when you run the locomotive the chuff sounds quieter than normal. If this is the case do this, turn the volume all the way down on your command controller. Next, when the volume is all the way down press and hold the aux-1 button, like you are activating sequence control. You will notice that you cannot turn the volume up all the way, but eventually it will come back up. Once the volume is back to it's full volume the locomotive should be back to it's original settings. If that is not the case then I got nothing, sorry.

Trainmaster04 posted:

I may have an answer for you. First I have to ask, is the chuff sound level lower than the whistle or bell? For example, when you run the locomotive the chuff sounds quieter than normal. If this is the case do this, turn the volume all the way down on your command controller. Next, when the volume is all the way down press and hold the aux-1 button, like you are activating sequence control. You will notice that you cannot turn the volume up all the way, but eventually it will come back up. Once the volume is back to it's full volume the locomotive should be back to it's original settings. If that is not the case then I got nothing, sorry.

The problem is I only have videos of what she sounds like, I only just received her and haven’t own one before. So I think I’m general the sounds are much lower than they should be with everything turned up high.

 Then again I am comparing this to my GS-2 Tmcc which is a different beast.

I will still try your suggestion though.

A speaker baffle will likely boost the sound level, and possibly looking for a higher efficiency speaker and still using the speaker baffle.  Given the room in the tender, it might also be possible to add a speaker and use two 4 ohm speakers in series, or two 16 ohm speakers in parallel.

UPMav#488 posted:

Trainmaster04 posted:

I may have an answer for you. First I have to ask, is the chuff sound level lower than the whistle or bell? For example, when you run the locomotive the chuff sounds quieter than normal. If this is the case do this, turn the volume all the way down on your command controller. Next, when the volume is all the way down press and hold the aux-1 button, like you are activating sequence control. You will notice that you cannot turn the volume up all the way, but eventually it will come back up. Once the volume is back to it's full volume the locomotive should be back to it's original settings. If that is not the case then I got nothing, sorry.

The problem is I only have videos of what she sounds like, I only just received her and haven’t own one before. So I think I’m general the sounds are much lower than they should be with everything turned up high.

 Then again I am comparing this to my GS-2 Tmcc which is a different beast.

I will still try your suggestion though.

Sounds good. 

I have two of these engines and they came stock with literally booming sounds (as well as huge smoke output) - as good as any Lionel steamers with speakers only in the tender. Bear in mind that videos can be deceptive in terms of sound and smoke output.

I vaguely remember that there was a generation of Legacy engines that had slightly muted sounds. These early Legacy engines were not among them.

I’d check your sound settings; if you can post a video that will help assess whether your sounds are really below par.

I'm in the same boat as Hancock.  These look and sound great, direct from the factory.

Hello so here are some short videos i took. Hope this helps.

Do you actually have TMCC or Legacy hooked up to this track?  Or are you just using that transformer?  Have you tried restoring to the factory settings?

BTW:  all O Scale Steam engines run best if you remove the HO scale track from your table.  

Your sounds clearly work.....so this should be fixable, IMHO.  My first run FEF is considerably louder. 

Well, those are the correct sound effects and any lack of volume is not obvious to me at the distance you took the video. If the volume had been turned down by the previous owner using a CAB remote, I don't think that setting would "stick" when using conventional transformer control but maybe someone more expert can weigh in if that is a possibility. However you mention in one of your posts having a remote and if it's a CAB2 then you can check whether the volume is all the way up using that. 

The only other thing that occurs to me is that maybe your volume pot has developed a fault - which is not impossible given that the engine is now something like 9 or 10 years old. Or maybe it's a speaker defect but you'd only be able to do a visual inspection on that by taking the tender shell off. 

Berkshire President posted:

Do you actually have TMCC or Legacy hooked up to this track?  Or are you just using that transformer?  Have you tried restoring to the factory settings?

BTW:  all O Scale Steam engines run best if you remove the HO scale track from your table.  

Your sounds clearly work.....so this should be fixable, IMHO.  My first run FEF is considerably louder. 

I would plan to run this loco on layouts that have TMCC or Legacy hooked to the track. At the moment my layout is infancy, so it has no dcc or anything like that.

I thought I had read it had been factory reset. But I’ll try it again.

Also that’s Ho Track is the start of my Applewood Railroad narrow gauge railroad. 

You need to check the speaker and then the volume pot as potential issues.  There is no "factory reset" that would affect volume in conventional mode.

@Trainmaster04 posted:

I may have an answer for you. First I have to ask, is the chuff sound level lower than the whistle or bell? For example, when you run the locomotive the chuff sounds quieter than normal. If this is the case do this, turn the volume all the way down on your command controller. Next, when the volume is all the way down press and hold the aux-1 button, like you are activating sequence control. You will notice that you cannot turn the volume up all the way, but eventually it will come back up. Once the volume is back to it's full volume the locomotive should be back to it's original settings. If that is not the case then I got nothing, sorry.

Thank you for posting this.  Yesterday, I discovered this same issue (originally posted by Greg R.) with my Niagara Visionline engine.   In a search with the words "low volume" this topic popped up.  I followed your remedy and now the volume is back!!  What a relief!

@Gregcz1 posted:

Thank you for posting this.  Yesterday, I discovered this same issue (originally posted by Greg R.) with my Niagara Visionline engine.   In a search with the words "low volume" this topic popped up.  I followed your remedy and now the volume is back!!  What a relief!

I am glad a post I wrote many years ago is still helping out the community!