New run of Bachmann Connies- Is the Bach Mann going "Stealth" too?

[Lemosteam]

Scroll down to the bottom the see the new run of DCC Ready Connies  .

https://myemail.constantcontact.com/NEW-Baldwin-2-8-0-Steam-Locomotives-Now-In-Stock.html?soid=1115574866827&aid=j2yzWnzM2PE

[pjm20]

[speculation]

You know, under the guise of letting the consumer pick their sound decoder (I'm all for it) this may be a play to actually release products in our chip shortage world. I haven't done any research to determine if a lightboard is any different than a DCC decoder in terms of what chip components are in shortage, but this is may have influenced BLI and now Bachmann.

[/speculation]

[Lemosteam]

[speculation]

You know, under the guise of letting the consumer pick their sound decoder (I'm all for it) this may be a play to actually release products in our chip shortage world. I haven't done any research to determine if a lightboard is any different than a DCC decoder in terms of what chip components are in shortage, but this is may have influenced BLI and now Bachmann.

[/speculation]

HMMMMMMMMM!

[thomasjmdavis]

[speculation]

You know, under the guise of letting the consumer pick their sound decoder (I'm all for it) this may be a play to actually release products in our chip shortage world. I haven't done any research to determine if a lightboard is any different than a DCC decoder in terms of what chip components are in shortage, but this is may have influenced BLI and now Bachmann.

[/speculation]

I think you are on to something here.  Given that we have seen automakers have had temporary plant shut downs in recent years, it would be logical to assume you are correct, and these shortages would impact DCC board manufacturing.

A possible second reason is that these companies are realizing that, at least in N scale, there are a lot of folks who still operate small layouts on DC, and that they are losing that market, simply because those folks don't want to pay $100+ for electronics they don't use.  Add those folks to the DCC users who have preferred brands of decoders (that are distinctly NOT Bachmann or BLI), or who don't use sound, and that adds up to a substantial portion of the market for steam, or for locos in general.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Interesting!

I know Rapido was suffering through a chip shortage that was holding up a bunch of models.

[Point353]

It would be interesting to find out how it was decided which four roadnames would be made available as DCC/sound-equipped and which four would be DCC-ready.

[Lemosteam]

Semi-related:

Have folks been struggling to obtain decoders on the market? Have they been affected by the chip shortages too?

[Jbub]

Semi-related:

Have folks been struggling to obtain decoders on the market? Have they been affected by the chip shortages too?

ESU's president posted a reply on the book of faces to address some complaints about customer support. He did mention that the worldwide IC chip shortage was the reason we haven't seen product shipping to the states.

[C855B]

ESU's president posted a reply on the book of faces to address some complaints about customer support. He did mention that the worldwide IC chip shortage was the reason we haven't seen product shipping to the states.

Yes. Some ESU has been on back order for a while at my preferred online shop.

[peteski]

ZIMO added a "chip surcharge" to price of their decoders. Seems like it is similar to restaurants showing "market price" for things like lobster.

[C855B]

An issue may also be price. Everything has been going up, some things a lot. It is possible that they're trying not to lose sales as necessary price adjustments to recover increased costs take their (...silly...) MSRP past what they've determined to be the "tolerable pain" threshold.

[daniel_leavitt2000]

One would hope this will fuel better standardization between manufacturers. I have held off on a few Bachmann and other equipment because I already have ESU and BLI sound decoders which are almost totally incompatible. It's bad enough that ESU V4 and V5 are so different, at least you can change the CVs to make the features line up OK.

It would be great if ESU opened up their IP. We need standardization across sound decoders. That didn't happen with DCC until Lenz stepped up and opened their system.

[nickelplate759]

An issue may also be price. Everything has been going up, some things a lot. It is possible that they're trying not to lose sales as necessary price adjustments to recover increased costs take their (...silly...) MSRP past what they've determined to be the "tolerable pain" threshold.

I'm sure that's part of it.  I really would like to order an A-B-A set of NP passenger F7s, but BLI's price right now is over $600 for both A's with DDC+sound and a dummy B.  Even with common 15% discounts that's a bit steep for me.

[jdcolombo]

One would hope this will fuel better standardization between manufacturers. I have held off on a few Bachmann and other equipment because I already have ESU and BLI sound decoders which are almost totally incompatible. It's bad enough that ESU V4 and V5 are so different, at least you can change the CVs to make the features line up OK.

It would be great if ESU opened up their IP. We need standardization across sound decoders. That didn't happen with DCC until Lenz stepped up and opened their system.

What standardization are you looking for?  All decoders use F0 for front and rear lights (whether you like it or not).  Sound decoders have standardized on F1 for the bell, F2 for the horn.  Other function keys vary widely among manufacturers, but I'm not sure that's because of intellectual property - it's just a choice by the individual manufacturer.  ESU makes very wide use of indexed CV's, where others (e.g., Soundtraxx) typically do not.  Again, a manufacturer's choice, not an IP issue.

I used to use Soundtraxx Tsunami decoders in my steam locos, because they frankly have some advantages, particularly the sound equalizer circuit that allows you to fine tune the sounds of bells, whistles and chuffs to best match the installed speaker.  But I finally switched everything to ESU because it was just easier to learn one manufacturer's chosen implementation of certain things than to have to switch my brain between two very different implementations.  I don't think any of these differences was do to intellectual property; they were simply choices by the manufacturers to do things a particular way, and I doubt Soundtraxx would suddenly adopt ESU's "way" even if they had a license for all of ESU's IP.

The same is true of DCC systems, BTW.  There are folks who favor Digitrax and folks who favor NCE.  It has nothing to do with IP, but rather has everything to do with how each manufacturer has chosen to implement certain specific tasks.  There's not much that's secret about any of this or patented (except for the communications bus system, I think).  NCE implements Advanced Consisting very nicely; Digitrax doesn't, and prefers its own command-station assisted "universal" consisting approach.  I suspect you could beat them both with a lead pipe and neither would change.

Nevertheless: the release of DCC ready engines is a HUGE advantage for people (like me) that have a preferred decoder.  Just give me the engine and let me install what I want.  Please.  And this specific announcement from Bachmann is excellent news: I need a couple more 2-8-0's for the layout!

John C.

[sirenwerks]

Are decoderless B-mann Connies a hot item right now? I've been sittting on two for a while thinking about getting rid of them.  Maybe now's the time...