# Which Smoke Unit is best - MTH or Aristo SD-45?



## jimtyp (Jan 2, 2008)

Anyone have expience with the MTH smoke unit and the Aristo SD-45 smoke unit and could make a recommendation on which they think works better.


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## John Allman (Jan 2, 2008)

I have both. The aristo unit is better than all past aristo/usa/LGB units. It works fine, and has an auto cut off for when it runs out of smoke fluid. Which is good, because it will, as it uses fluid at an amazing rate. 

It is also not half the unit the MTH system is. The MTH unit puts out vastly more smoke, with a much quieter fan. There simply is no comparison. Which maybe why you will have trouble buying the MTH unit, as they seem to be always out of stock. The MTH unit can be syncronized to the chuff of a steamer (up to 16 cycles per revolution) or notch level of a diesel. It has labored smoke (twice the normal output) - or drift - (half the normal output), again features unavailable on other systems. 
You maybe able to control the smoke without using MTH's DCS system. That I really don't know. My locomotives have reostats to turn the smoke up, down or off. (that is automatically overridden by a DCS signal if you use it) 

I never run my SD45 with the smoke on. Its not worth the effort. I never run my Hudson or Challenger without the smoke on because it is worth it.


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## jimtyp (Jan 2, 2008)

John, thanks for your input. Have any idea where to get an MTH smoke unit? I can't seem to find anyone that sells them?  Is there a part number?

Does the MTH have auto shutoff or will it burn out if left on and no fluid?


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## Guest (Feb 11, 2008)

Jim,
 MTH has the best smoking unit ive seen so far, and i have aristo, usa trainamerica studios systems and none compare heres the part # you can get them thrue MTH 1500001 
Nick.


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## jimtyp (Jan 2, 2008)

Thanks Nick, do you order directly through MTH?


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## jimtyp (Jan 2, 2008)

Got another question on the MTH, does it work with DC? Someone mentioned it may not but that seems hard to believe?

Also, is a PS-2 (ProtoSound 2) board required to make the unit work, or can it work directly off of track power?


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

The TAS one is worth looking at, more metal, smokes as much as MTH, and has the auto shutoff, the "puffing" input, etc. It's about $70 I think.... 

(Hi Nick!) 

Regards, Greg


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## Rayman4449 (Jan 2, 2008)

The MTH smoke units run $55 each and can be ordered direct from them.

They will definately work on straight DC power, the question is what voltage is safe to run them at.  You don't really need the DCS board as long as you use a safe voltage to the heat elements.  Hooking direct to track voltage without regulation will without a doubt blow the heating elements.

If you let them run out of fluid for a long period of time you do run the risk of damaging the elements.  It does not have built in auto-shutoff circuits built into the unit.  If you are running a safe voltage level you should be ok.  

Raymond


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Ray, do the MTH ones have a separate "chuff" input, or is the fan separate from the rest of the wiring?

Thanks, Greg


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## Rayman4449 (Jan 2, 2008)

Hey Greg,

The fan is separate from the element wiring.  

The MTH unit has two pairs of connection points, one pair for the fan and the other for the heating elements.  They are direct connections, no electronics between them and the fan/elements.

Raymond


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## Chucks_Trains (Jan 2, 2008)

Here's a few pics showing the difference in size between the MTH Hudson type smoke unit and the TAStudios smoke unit.
The MTH Big Boy & Challenger smoke units are about half again bigger than the Hudson unit...


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## lownote (Jan 3, 2008)

Wow, that MTH unit is huge

How hard is it to install an MTH smoke unit in an Aristo? How do you synchronize the fan to the chuff?


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Chuck (I hope that is your name), that unit is huge, and the big boy is even larger?

Could you give the dimensions or shoot it with a ruler? Also, what's on the bottom of the left hand tank? It sort of looks like mounting hardware, but cannot tell.

Just guessing, but it sure looks like the MTH has a much larger fluid capacity.


It seems that the right hand part of the MTH is the element and the fan, is the left side the reservoir?


On the question of syncing with the chuff, the MTH fan leads are separate, but just turning the fan on and off with the chuff is probably not good enough.


Several manufacturers use electronics to not only spin the fan up fast, but to stop it quickly, much more quickly than just turning off the power. That helps immensely with making distinctive "puffs".


My understanding is that TAS does this, and I know MTH has a patent on this and assume it's in their controller electronics. If you use the MTH unit by itself, I suspect you do not get this benefit.


So, for installation on locos without the MTH DCS controller, I would expect synchronized puffing would not be great.


Anyone experimented with this?

Regards, Greg


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## Guest (Feb 15, 2008)

Greg,
 Hows the wheather out there a lot better than here in NY i hope,take a look at the video that ray has here on the forum of the last show he was at, you'll see a hudson in the video it looks like the same smoke system that is in my usa hudson witch is a tas one the video will give you an ideal of how it smokes. aristo when they work and don't leak all over everthing smokes ok, the TAS is better, but hands down the one Ray put in my steamers smoke me out and they are mth. i think it was chuck a while back that posted he had put dcs in his k-4 and posted a picture and it appeared to smoke even better than mine. go back thrue the archives and you should be able to find the photo. sweet sweet sweet. is all i can say/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/blink.gif Ray i need DCS in my k-4's..................
Nick..


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## Rayman4449 (Jan 2, 2008)

*Lownote:*  What aristo are you thinking of putting it in?  I've installed them in Mallets, Pacifics and Mikados.  No need for them in diesels, way overkill.  If you were to just connect it to the existing Aristo power boards you would need to develop some voltage reducing circuits as I'm sure they are 5v.  Not sure what the MTH Fan motor rated voltage is.  

*Greg:*  Yeah the Big Boy and Challengers are longer since they have double stacks.   On side is the fan and the other is the reservoir + elements.   The reservior is obviously very large and can go a long time between fills.   That may be what they are doing is stopping the fan but I didn't think so.  I'll check to see if a negative voltage is applied to stop it.

*Nick:  *LOL  I don't know that I'm going to touch those babies.  LOL  2 hours to dismantle is WAY too much time to just get it apart.  I don't like working on Brass engines.  My Accucraft scared the **** out of me trying to figure out how to take it apart and I gave up before I even loosened one screw.  


Raymond


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Raymond, I did the hard work for you, should not take you over 30 minutes to take the K apart:

http://www.elmassian.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=202&Itemid=243

Notice the 3 sections under this main section, one is disassembly.

By the way, if MTH is using one of their patents, you can tell because the fan will stop suddenly. Also, it does not have to be a negative voltage you would see, since they would be using back emf, it might be zero volts, or you might have to capture it on a storage scope.

The Aristo units have the power regulator on board, they take track voltage.

Regards, Greg


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## Chucks_Trains (Jan 2, 2008)

Greg, This one measures about 3" long  x  1-3/8" wide x 1-3/4" tall. The big dual output units in the Big Boy's & Challengers are probably around 4" long.

The resevoir is on the left with the fan chamber on the right.

The mounting bracket you spotted is for a MTH Hudson..I have it apart for painting.

I don't know the voltage that they run at but I do know it's not very high. MTH DCS control has 3 smoke level settings and a boost setting that really pours out the smoke and a drift setting that will make the smoke output about diminish.

When I was messing around with DCC I wired a Hudson type smoke unit up to a LGB locomotive decoder without much luck. It was the new LGB decoder that had variable voltage outputs. The heating element was wired to the motor outputs and the fan to a lighting circuit. The decoder got hot in about 30 seconds and shut off. I did get it to work for awhile by installing some big resistors but they got hot.

I gave up and went back to DCS.

The MTH Hudson smoke unit will fit in a K4 boiler..just barely..


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## Paul Burch (Jan 2, 2008)

I had some friends over the other day for a meet when the subject of smoke came up and I remembered this post string. After we finished running at my house we went next door to my neigbors for some smoke demonstrations with his O scale MTH locos. It does blow away anything we have in G. So my question is has anyone actually found a way to use a stand alone MTH smoke unit and make it chuff,say with a DCC system or wheel magnets without infringing on the MTH patent? I'm thinking about getting one of the Aristo 2-8-0's when they come out. Synchronized chuffing smoke would be a goal with that loco. The TAS turbo smoke unit was mentioned. Any opinions on that unit?


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## jimtyp (Jan 2, 2008)

I know Bubba was looking into putting either MTH or Turbo smoke into a Bachmann K-27, but I don't know how far along he is.? 

Yes, I think a really good smoke unit with sync'd chuff smoke would be something that is lacking in G. MTH makes a heck of a smoke unit. Even the Turbo smoke unit folks said they thought it would put out more smoke, but I think it's easier to hook up the Turbo smoke than the MTH smoke unit. It sounded to me like to hook up MTH you need an extra board and the setup could get expensive, whereas Turbo smoke I think just needed an input trigger, like magnets used for chuff sound. I'd be real interested if someone has more info too.


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## pimanjc (Jan 2, 2008)

Raymond, 
Greg's website was used when I took my K-4 apart. There are additional teardown/assemble pictures in my K-4 thread: http://www.mylargescale.com/Community/Forums/tabid/56/forumid/17/postid/9776/view/topic/Default.aspx Look at page 3. Also there are installation pictures for the SD45 smoke unit into the K-4. More pictures will be posted in the near future. 

JimC.


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## Rayman4449 (Jan 2, 2008)

Thanks Jim. Kudos for having the guts to pull a brass engine apart! I looked at my Accucraft Daylight once to put in an LGB smoke unit years ago and chickened out. /DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/tongue.gif 

It looks like the TAS unit has electronics built on to the smoke unit. If its purpose is to control(limit) the voltage to the elements then that will be simpler to implement than a stock MTH smoke unit. 

We do have this kind of great smoke output, chuff, etc in G already, it's built into the DCS sound and control system that is available in every MTH engine they sell and is included in their G scale DCS Upgrade kits. That is right though that it doesn't seem outside of DCS, there is anything that even comes close that is or will integrate with the sound and control systems that are out there today, but I thought I heard DCC has a way to control chuff output? See the videos on my website of the smoke output from my Mallets that I've converted to DCS. 

As far as boards needed to make it work, the board referred to before is the DCS sound and control board. MTH smoke units wire directly the main DCS board, there are no secondary boards needed. What I think is wanted is some sort of third party control board that would allow it to interface with other sound control systems. I don't know if there is anything out there (non-MTH) that would do that. I thought I've heard of USA Trains Hudson's getting synced chuff under I think DCC, in which case the MTH unit should work. 

Raymond


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

It's clear from the picture of the MTH unit that the fan motor has no control electronics, it's directly connected to the 4 pin plug. The MTH "decoder" has the drive "power" to modulate the fan speed, and to the microprocessor to make it do it's tricks. 

That's why hooking it directly to a "normal" decoder overheated it. The TAS unit has a "signal input" that controls the fan on off, that input is a low voltage low current "control" line, not the actual fan motor connection. 

So the TAS unit can be interfaced to low voltage, low current outputs. The LGB stuff likewise interfaces at the "control signal" level, you can check out the "Puffing Smoke Unit" from Massoth, which has all kinds of interfaces, but none connect DIRECTLY to the fan motor. 

Regards, Greg


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## Guest (Apr 21, 2008)

MTH smoke units rule all...for putting out great smoke" border=0>/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/tongue2.gif" border=0>/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/whistling.gif" border=0>" border=0> 
Nick...


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## Guest (Apr 21, 2008)

PS whats up with this web site again when i press on a smiley face it comes up border... allways something around here...


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## Treeman (Jan 6, 2008)

Massoth had their new unit in Az. It had good smoke output and can be set to chuff or continous output. Also supplied in two voltages.


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## jimtyp (Jan 2, 2008)

Mike, how would you compare it to the MTH, Aristo or Turbo Smoke?


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## MarkLewis (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Paul Burch on 04/21/2008 10:36 AM
I had some friends over the other day for a meet when the subject of smoke came up and I remembered this post string. After we finished running at my house we went next door to my neigbors for some smoke demonstrations with his O scale MTH locos. It does blow away anything we have in G. So my question is has anyone actually found a way to use a stand alone MTH smoke unit and make it chuff,say with a DCC system or wheel magnets without infringing on the MTH patent? I'm thinking about getting one of the Aristo 2-8-0's when they come out. Synchronized chuffing smoke would be a goal with that loco. The TAS turbo smoke unit was mentioned. Any opinions on that unit?




As I understand things (always a stretch), if you use their patented technology for your own use, you are not infringing on their patent. To infringe upon a patent you have to sell the product. Simply making it is ok. 



I think. 



Mark


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Mark, did you notice you replied to a post on page one? It was the last post on the first page, not the second page... from the 21st of last month. 

Paul, if you are reading this, the fourth post in the thread gives an opinion of the TAS unit, so you might want to read the thread from the beginning to see if any other questions are answered. My opinion was that it is a good unit. I have a friend that took out an aristo unit and put the TAS unit in his mallet, the pictures are on my web site. 

Basically if you want to run the MTH unit to chuff, you need a high speed motor switching circuit to pulse the motor and handle all the current. 

The TAS unit has a logic input to do it. 

The aristo has no chuff capability. 

The massoth unit does, but it does not document the use of the interfaces, and it has several... it assumes you are using certain hardware with certain connecting cables. The translated manual is poor and lacking some information, like where it references CV's... 

Regards, Greg


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## Treeman (Jan 6, 2008)

I have not seen the MTH or the Aristo units in operation. The Massoth smoker is however is much stronger than any of the LGB, which isn't saying much I know.


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## Rayman4449 (Jan 2, 2008)

To help with the comparison, this is what an MTH One Gauge smoke unit (powered by the DCS board) puts out: 

http://www.rayman4449.dynip.com/Aristocraft_Mallet_Video_6_2100kbs.wmv - 41mb 
http://www.rayman4449.dynip.com/Aristocraft_Mallet_Video_6_1000kbs.wmv - 20mb 
http://www.rayman4449.dynip.com/Aristocraft_Mallet_Video_6_150kbs.wmv - 3mb 


Raymond


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## Guest (May 7, 2008)

Now boys, thats what we call in the DCS world as SMOKIN UMMMM UP/DesktopModules/NTForums/themes/mls/emoticons/w00t.gif 
Nick..


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

That's nice smoke, probably as good as normal humans will get. 

But THIS is killer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQ7mNYpSDFw&feature=related 

Greg


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## jimtyp (Jan 2, 2008)

Can you buy the Dynamic Smoke separate of a loco? Is there a dealer in the US?


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## Greg Elmassian (Jan 3, 2008)

Do not know, have not investigated. You want to contact the manufacturer. I would guess that buying parts would be difficult. The loco is around $3,000 here I believe, so parts would not be cheap either. 

Just wanted to show an example of what can be done. I have heard of people using 2 smoke units piped together, that would be my first try. 


Regards, Greg


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## Rayman4449 (Jan 2, 2008)

When I looked into it a year or two ago after seeing that video and it was available. It was $90. I never went the final step in getting one as I had enough R&D projects with DCS alone. 


Raymond


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## jimtyp (Jan 2, 2008)

Ray, do you still have your contact info?


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## Rayman4449 (Jan 2, 2008)

I'm not sure. I'll check. You may want to try and contact them directly through their website in the mean time. 

Raymond


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