I opened a friend’s vintage Aristo-Craft RS-3 and found this sound board in the fuel tank.
I have never seen one like this before. One of the components is labeled “RS32K” and dated 12-13-00. I thought it might be a Phoenix Sound 2K2, but it doesn’t look at all like it.
Does anyone recognize this sound board?
Definitely not a Phoenix. Other than that I can’t help.
Aristo only oem’d one manufacturer’s sound boards: P.H. Hobbies.
There were countless variations on the boards themselves, it’s almost a hobby in itself trying to document all the different versions made.
I’ll bet if you look around you will find some more information on the silkscreen.
Found an SD-45 one from P.H. Hobbies, identical to your board:
That is definately PH Hobbies. I had two of them, they actually sounded pretty good. I just could not get the bell, horn and cab chatter to work with the revo.
PH Hobbies also Made USA’s Ro Sound.
Thanks Gentlemen!
I remember a much smaller version of the PH Hobbies sound board. I guess that was an early analog version. It had four solder sockets for very fine wires to activate the horn and bell. If you hooked up all four wires, the sound did not work. If only one ground wire was used, they did work. The prime mover sounded like a kid blowing into a Chiclets’ box.
This one has three magnets to activate sound functions. That is something I can test to see if I can get the receiver to activate. With Stan’s help I was able to do this with an LGB Mallet.
I am curious as to why the installer added coils in the two wires in the top left corner. These are the green and red wires shown in Greg’s last picture. If the locomotive had a 75 MHz receiver installed, I could assume they were an attempt to overcome the radio frequency interference that plagued that receiver. But this diesel had a 27 MHz receiver installed which doesn’t usually suffer from that problem.
I guess this project is going to take longer than I thought. I shouldn’t be surprised though, as everything repair seems to take three times longer than expected.
Paul Norton said:
Thanks Gentlemen!
I guess this project is going to take longer than I thought. I shouldn’t be surprised though, as everything repair seems to take three times longer than expected.
Ah, yes. I experience the same phenomenon here.
Those 2 wires might be the speaker output.
Sometimes RF gets into the speaker leads, and back into the sound amp and causes problems.
Greg
David Maynard said:
Paul Norton said:
Thanks Gentlemen!
I guess this project is going to take longer than I thought. I shouldn’t be surprised though, as everything repair seems to take three times longer than expected.
Ah, yes. I experience the same phenomenon here.
Its Cheop’s Law, “Nothing gets built on time or within budget.”