Banging my head in frustration!!

I went to the club on Wednesday morning as I had some free time before an afternoon of appointments, so I took the oportunity of taking my EL class down to do some serious wiring away from the distractions (ie children) at home. Well after I had wired the track pickups and motor to the decoder it was time for a test. No sooner had I turned the test track on than a popping noise emanated from the speaker. This was even before I had turned the sound on the decoder ON! WTF! Could it be what looks like a stay-alive capacitor, as the popping noise was very regular in its rhythm. Like a capacitor charging then discharging. The PowerCab was saying that 0.3 amps was being drawn. So off with one of the cap leads to the decoder, but still no joy. the sound persisted. Arghhhhhhh, will this project never end?
That night I put a query out to the Yahoo Loksound forum. By the morning I had a couple of replies which suggested a dud decoder. I emailed the store I had purchased it from, and they had no problems with me returning it for testing/replacement (hopefully!).
As I had purchased another Select for my NSWGR Class 44, but had yet to install it, I thought it wise to check this one out before mailing anything back to the store. Sunday morning I took the Class 44 out and removed the shell. Not much room 'under the hood' on this model either. BANG, BANG, BANG goes my head! Oh well, I can still connect the decoder up and test the sound, but may have to do some creative installing later. Update on how this decoder went next entry.