BEMF & Tomix DE10: A Delightful Combination

[CaptOblivious]

My very first locomotive was a Kato EF65-1000. When I first installed a decoder, I followed Digitrax's instructions for setting up BEMF (Back-EMF). The locomotive is unparalleled for low-speed operation—smooth, silent…perfect. But activating BEMF destroyed all that. I decided that BEMF was not for me.

On a whim, while setting up my DE10 tonight, I tried the same. (yay! finally! I put my reserve order for it just about a year ago last month, and only just now have the model, a working decoder in the model, and now have the decoder set up.) The results were nothing short of stunning. Where Ol' Growly used to lurch around at low speed, it is now, with BEMF set up, a pretty decent low-speed runner! Not great, but decent—far more than I had expected.

So, now I'm a believer in BEMF.

What are y'all's experiences using BEMF on your trains?

[alpineaustralia]

Capt. I am a little confused by your comment "I followed Digitrax's instructions for setting up BEMF (Back-EMF)."
I thought that the digitrax decoders already came with it switched on.
Are talking about CV 54 and Function 6 low speed switching?
I am confused and my head hurts.

[CaptOblivious]

CV57, which controls the "intensity" of BEMF, can be set to 0, turning it off. I thought the default for CV57 was 0, based on the first source below, but the second source indicates that the default value is 6. (And people wonder why I hate Digitrax documentation!)

So, anyway, yeah, BEMF does come switched on from the factory, but before it can work effectively, you have to do a little set-up, which takes about half an hour.

source (and the very instructions I mentioned in the first post, for the curious):
http://www.digitrax.com/appnote_bemf.php
http://www.digitrax.com/kb/index.php?a=89