Re: Anyone know about these new Katos?

Twibil wrote:
Kato is now offering various of their diesels with built-in Digitrax
DCC and sound units. I'm interested in this one (see link) and have a
few questions:

(A) Is the Digitraxx unit compatible with my club-dictated NCE Power
Cab? (Recall that the sum total of my electronic knowledge consists of
having once discovered that sticking a hairpin into a wall socket has
unpleasant side-effects. Be gentle.)

Yes, all the basic functions will work, and some of the non-basic ones will work, too, but NCE and Digitraxx each use some of the optional control variables differently, so you'll have to experiment. It's quite likely that some of your club-mates have worked out the equivalences. Depending on the decoder, some functions will not be accessible from the NCE controller, and vice versa. But that's true for any decoder and controller combination.

(B) I've yet to own a Kato locomotive. How reliable are their
mechanisms, Etc? I've been having serious reliability issues with
Athearn Genesis units running on DCC (they lose their programming at
random intervals and either refuse to move or continue on regardless
of input), and want to avoid this in the future if possible.

Superb mechanisms. Smooth, and according to reports from a couple of clubs who run their locomotives many hundreds of hours per year, the most durable of all.

(C) None of the few hobby shops around here stock any of the built-in
DCC and sound Kato units (although they'll special-order them for me
at a cost greater than that when bought directly from Kato) so I've
been unable to find one to actually get my hands on, operate, and
listen to. Has anyone here actually seen, heard, owned or just used
one?

Yes, they are as good as any other sound-equipped units. Horns sound good, as does e-motor whine (if present.)

IMO 1" speakers are too small for a convincing deep-bass diesel throb or growl, but tastes vary. I think speakers in a dummy unit sound better, since they can be bigger (Eg, 1.5" speaker has an effective area more than 2x that of the smaller speakers, so it can push twice as much air, which makes a huge difference at lower frequencies.)

If you want instant service, an extra fee is reasonable. If they are merely piggy-backing your "special order" on their next regular one, they should offer a discount - it's instant turnover, after all...

cheers,

wolf k.

.

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