Sound Decoder Recs. for several tough ones.

[kchronister]

Hey all... At long last I've decided to drink the kool-aid and put sound in my remaining 'silent' locos. Some of 'em are a little tough, though, and I wonder if anyone here has suggestions/experience... best of all, photos and discussion of installs...

The locos I'm looking at are (All HO)

Spectrum 3-truck shay. I've seen the Soundtraxx DSX install at Tonystrains.com, but wondering about other options. I vaguely recall a plug-and-play sound decoder for this shay that actually sounded like a shay...

Mantua 2-6-6-2 logger, no tender. This is a tough one... I don't think it can be done. But if someone thinks otherwise, I'd love to know.

Rivarossi 2-truck Heisler. Another "is it even possible" candidate...

Concor Pioneer Zephyr. Several candidates for this, and not a tough install, but if anyone has thoughts/input about ones that will sound the "closest" I'm all ears.

And a few I'm pretty comfortable I have covered, but certainly open to opinions or ideas:

Heritage 2-8-8-2
Spectrum K4s
Spectrum Heavy Mountain

 

[Fluesheet]

Finding information on specific installs is a tough one. I just completed a Tsunami install in a Heritage 0-6-0 which was a challenge due to the space involved, but nothing compared to your Heisler or 2-6-6-2 Both would be fairly simple to convert to silent DCC, but that's obviously not what you want!

I'll eventually write up my project, I encourage you to do the same for each of your locos - hopefully someone will benefit from someone who has "been there".

Fluesheet.

 

[kchronister]

Thanks for the info. My biggest problem is remembering to grab my digital camera and take pics as I do the install. I always remember about 2/3 of the way through...