Running 1/10 scale buggies, and trucks with 48pitch gears for most of my time in the hobby; then hopping on the 1/8 buggy platform recently....yes it is louder in general than what I was used to. Just the nature of the gear pitch and larger sized teeth. I just run the gear mesh with a slight "tick" of spur gear movement when rocked back and forth with my finger, and all is good.

I'm sort of in the same situation with the idea for building a short course truck out of the buggy as well in the future. The 2wd SC thing has bit me again as I am currently working on some cheap eBay 1/10 scale chassis finds. I cant keep my Adobe open for any length of time (starting to piss me off ) to get part numbers needed for your conversion.