Bachmann American 4-4-0 tender disassembly?

[ChucklesMc]

Just received the HO DCC Ready Bachmann American 4-4-0 Santa Fe - how does one open up the tender - folks at SoundTraxx recommended a decoder (Tsunami 2) with a cube speaker for installation into the tender.  The Bachmann schematic isn't that helpful (I'm a Newbie) pointing at what needs to be unscrewed, etc., to access the inners where the 8 pin connector is that I will have to remove.  Help!

[trainman203]

Every tender shell in the world is attached by screws. You just have to locate them and undo them.  Model railroading is a series of challenges. Not everything is snap together.

But. If you are having trouble getting the tender shell off, I suspect that installation of the tsunami 2–2 decoder and speaker are going to be even further beyond your abilities of the moment. Despite the oft repeated mantra that there's an eight pin plug, and that's all you have to do, there's a good bit more to a decoder install than just plugging the decoder in.

To avoid frustration and heartache, I very highly recommend that you locate a professional tech to do this installation for you. They are dozens of them, find them by asking Mr. Google.

There's work that I despise doing that I pay other people to do.  One is mowing the lawn, another is decoder installation. I'd much rather be running an engine with properly installed sound than spending all day trying to figure out which wire is which, and poking the soldering iron through the tender shell while I'm at it.  Professional decoder installation, to me, is well worth the $100 or so labor cost. You send the engine and $100 off, and get it back running right with the sound sounding right.

The folks at Soundtraxx are the best. One is a personal friend. They will recommend the right stuff for you to buy, but I'd still get professional installation rather than try it myself. I have at least 25 steam engines with professionally installed sound. They all run right, sound right, and make model railroading exponentially even more fun than it was when I started over 60 years ago.

[ChucklesMc]

Thank you so much for your valuable comments.  I, truly, had thought it would be a simple plug and play but, even considering the very detailed SoundTraxx wiring instructions and videos, it seems like a daunting task and I'm going to take your advice.  I do realize the tender is screwed together but I recall reading where some components snap on and should be removed prior to trying to locate and remove the first (?) set of screws...

[trainman203]

Get a professional job for at least your first one.  Try a self install on some used thing you get off of eBay.

You've got to properly mount the speakers, make sure you have the right ones matched to the electrical requirements of the decoder in the first place, and at minimum solder the speaker wires to the speaker.  There's a baffle to install, if I'm not mistaken, and you've got to do the whole job in assurance that something doesn't rattle somewhere when you blow the whistle. Having hunted for that elusive rattle many times in the past, I can tell you that's not what you want to be doing when you finish that job, put the engine on the track, and want to run it right then.  The rattle could be due to improper speaker attachment, improper baffle attachment, or the tender shell not being properly reattached. Some whistles rattle things much more easily than others, especially certain three chimes. On some tenders, I've had to line the little ridge where the tender shell meets the floor with masking tape to stop the rattle.  And others, it's been the coal load doing it.  In some cases, you have to turn the Master  volume way down below where you really want it to stop the rattle.  I'm not meaning to frustrate you, but just letting you know in advance what can happen.

[trainman203]

Something I forgot is that the default volume settings for tsunami 2–2 are very loud, a reaction to complaints to Soundtraxx that that the old tsunamis weren't loud enough.

There have always been numbers of model railroaders who think that the sound should be almost completely turned off, barely audible 3 feet away.  I believe that the earliest decoders catered to this thought. There's nothing wrong with that if that is what you want. But if you are hard of hearing like me, you should be able to turn the sound up to suit yourself.  With the new decoders, Soundtraxx corrected this deficiency to be overpowering with HO trains. I would think all this extra power is meant for the very large speakers in garden size trains.

At any rate, on my engines, the default settings often overdrove the speakers, requiring the master volume to be turned considerably down and the whistle even more so. Be aware that you need a DCC operating system more advanced than Bachmann's EZ command to change volumes and other control variables (CV's).

The default sound volumes are not well balanced in relation to each other anyway. When you get to the point where you want to reset them, I'll be glad to help you. It's a topic long enough and detailed enough to warrant another posting.