Volume Pot

Brice,

Most people who upgrade engines are going to run them with DCS and the manual volume control is not necessary.  I usually keep them in the engines if they are there but eliminate them if I need the space or if they are not present in the donor engine.

Dave

I've eliminated them like Dave said, to create space... to upgrade speakers or whatever. The bracket and the volume pot come out, and I don't need it or miss it, as I run them DCS anyway. If you run conventional, I would keep it.

If there's a hole for it and it's easy to fit, I keep it.  If I'm putting the PS/2 upgrade in something other than a PS/1, usually the volume pot and the recharging port don't make the cut.

I usually include the volume pot just because I guess.

If I or a future owner wanted to run conventionally it would be handy.

Rod

Not that it affects me, but a question that I had while reading the various answers: If there's no volume pot and the use wants to run it in conventional, what is the volume setting default???

If it was run using DCS before-hand, is that setting the default in conventional?  What if it hasn't been run under DCS before-hand?

- walt

Without the pot, if loco ever starts in conventional, your ears will blow and hopefully not the speaker.  I forget the resistance of the pot, but if you were to get 2 1/4-watt resistors of equal ohmage, totalling the pot resistance, you could save much space.  I have done that of a few upgrades.

RJR it is 10K.    I just ask people what they want.  On my own engines, I ditch it.

Default is full volume.  Setting saved in DCS will remain in conventional until a feature reset.  At full volume the resistance from red to gray is 0 ohms, and at no volume the resistance between red and blue is 0.  So no need for resistors unless you want to lock in a volume less than full.  G

GGG, I disagree with you that setting in dcs will carry over into conventional.  I regularly leave pot volume high, so I can tell if a loco comes up in conventional when its track is powered up.  If volume is loud, I know to press start.

George,

I agree with RJR.

I stand corrected.  I thought it did, since other features do, but makes sense since it has a manual control.  G

The other "major setting" that's not affected by DCS is smoke level.

On the contrary, if the physical smoke control, pot or switch, is set to smoke off, then smoke off is the default for DCS engines when they are started up under DCS. Otherwise, the default is smoke on at startup, using the smoke level that was previously set using DCS.

That's good info Barry, I never realized that the manual smoke level would affect DCS, but that's a useful setting.