Budget friendly and easy DCC & Sound Install on a N scale Atlas GP7 Trains with Shane Ep 74 

Loved Radio Shack

Bought one of these a few weeks back for my atlas gp38 and works great

Not only do I remember and love Radio Shack, I used to be an assistant district manager at Radio Shack.

I've bought several decoders from this seller for many of my Kato locomotives. If you want affordable DCC sound for your locos, I highly recommend you try these. They may not have the best audio dynamics compared to high end decoders, but for the price, they're well worth it.

You had better luck with them then I have had lately. In the past I loved putting this decoder In my n scale atlas RS-11's and had no problem's with them. The most recent decoders I have bought from MRC however have all been trouble makers\duds, They won't talk to the motor drive's on the locomotives they were installed on. And yes, I did insure that the contacts for the motor were in place. Great video!

I have the same loco with the same decoder, had to mill some metal away with the dremel and file it smooth. The decoder fits perfectly into it. changed some CV's e.g. 123 to 3 it sounds great. good video thanks

You could electrical tape instead of kapkon tape, and it would work fine

for prime mover try CV49

The shell is probably hitting the clear light tubes in the top. Also I would glue thin styrene to the sides where the motor contacts come up.. This will prevent shorts or burning up the decoder. As you know just order some Capton tape. The little rolls they sell last a long time.

great camera work are you a professional cameraman

Atlas sometimes uses cheap castings... they can swell up and make the shell hard to remove. I've had them disintegrate when I took a shell off...

Nice video and nice channel in general. I’ve bought a few sound decoders from those guys for sd40-2s. They work pretty well, as you said, and they are from the same design that is used for MRC decoders. They are not nearly as good as current higher end N scale sound from the big boys. Its really come a long way. The volume is really a problem with the cheapies. I don’t need super duper prototypical sound from my locos, but it should sound more like an engine than static, and its a close race there. It’s often drowned out by “gear noise” too! 😊 I wonder if you can just upgrade the speaker on these units for better quality, or if they are too underpowered? It’s also irksome the way lower end sound decoders drop when they have a power break. Even a microsecond dust speck will break contact in a way that stops the loco dead and requires the whole “start up procedure” to go back to square one. I recently used a spare digitrax sound decoder (really lousy) to make a sound boxcar. Built a wheel pickup system and replaced the built in capacitor with a few much bigger capacitors in parallel, to attempt to fix that stall problem. Kinda works. But I’m not good enough to get it perfect. The journey continues. Thanks for sharing your hard work. I’ve subscribed and will be watching. 😊👍👍

this looks much easer than the orignal pfm system i guess that dates me

I don't know if you have one or not, or maybe you do but haven't installed dcc on it yet. (Anyways) Would you happen to have an N scale Athearn F59PHI? If so, I would HIGHLY appreciate it if you could do a video on how install DCC and sound on it because I don't know how.(LOL)Love the vids too.

You gotta keep in mind that you're not working in camera frame!!!

Could you tell me what to look for and year for gp7 I have the gp38 but I know some frames are hard wired but want to get a gp7 so I can drop in my decoder, thanks

Getting what you pay for. MRC clone decoders are cheap bc they are inferior for quality, sound and performance. Spend the extra $ on an Atlas Gold series with Loksound, BLI QSI sound or Soundtraxx decoder.

You get what you pay for.