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Originally Posted by rightstuff4u  Do a search on Becker Radio and you will find the repair depot for these. Bring a boat load of money and you can fix anything. I think the amp is a $1200 repair and the tuner is another $300. No clue on the CD.
When I bought the car, the radio was toast. This is a 1992 500SEL, which had the radio and cassette but no CD. I opted to go the modern route.
I went to Best Buy, found an awesome radio that does AM/FM/FMHD/CD/MP3/USB. The USB port in the front is 100% better than any CD deck. I can put 55 CDs on a flash drive, plug it into the face of the radio, and tell it to play individual albums or shuffle random. It's 100% managed by Windows Media Player so I can change it as often as I want.
In fact, I can put the CDs on my phone and play them from the memory card in my phone while the radio recharges the phone. Ha! Try that with the stock Bose!
The trick is that Bose unit in your dash is just a control head for the gismos in the trunk. So all the speakers, the power, the antenna, etc., run into the trunk and not the dash. The cable running to the dash is unsuitable for running all this stuff to the dash.
I opted to use the Best Buy install Geek Squad. I think they charged me $125 to run an new cable to the trunk. It all looks factory except for the different color to the backlight on the radio. And the console mount fader is now part of the radio instead of on the console. No big deal in my world.
The big trick is that these old cars had speakers that came in (according to the Geek at BB) less than 2 ohms. No wonder a stereo turns to smoke! Fortunately, the doors have 2, which can be installed in series to give you closer to 4 ohms. Likewise, the back deck and the back door can be connected in series to give you close to 4 ohms as well.
The wire that runs to the front now contains the antenna power, the speakers, and possibly 12v (not sure). There is a 12v line in the dash but it's pretty lite weight. My new radio is 250W of raw power so it takes more than a whispy wire to run it.
What I can say is this... Having your CDs on a flash drive is awesome. Put them all in your pocket when you leave the car. Take it to the house and update it with the newly ripped CDs. Store hundreds of CDs in the space you can hold in one hand. And the new FM HD (High Definition) digital stuff is simply amazing! When I'm out on the fringe it goes in-and-out of HD mode and you can really hear the difference. CD quality from your FM radio!
Unless you feel compelled to keep your car original, ditch the BOSE. It was awesome technology in its day. But this is the 21st century. We've come a long way baby! |
Just the fact that you are using the compressed MP3/WMA through USB to demonstrate the sound quality of your sound system, and believing that your self powered DUAL branded head unit really puts out 250W indicate that you have never played the W140 Bose system to its full potential, or ever operated an aquoustically advanced system before.
just out of curiosity, what did the geeks do about the center speaker? i ll answer, they just looked at it and thought: "those germans put extra part for no reason... oh well, who understand germans anyway, gotta hurry up and finish this one, there are 2 rice hondas and a chrysler minivan waiting in line"
or better yet, they didnt even know it existed.
another question, how did they filter the frequency going to the 4 woofers in the rear deck? these are woofers and not full range speakers. do you enjoy the full range sound out of these speaker? if you hook up these woofer to a cd player there is enough midbass (125hz-400hz) to make celene dion sound like a man.
another question for you... when you sit in the driver seat and try to concentrate on the music flowing into your ears, you never realized that the sound coming from the left is MUCH louder than the right? same applies to the passenger, but they their balance will be right side biased. ever wondered why?
in conclusion, i am not asking you to change your $200 head unit, you are happy with it and thats great, but what i am saying do not promote the after market crap in here like it is BETTER than the stock system all around. basically, IT IS possible to outperforme the stock system, but you are looking to spend a good $2000-5000 MSRP on aftermarket quality hardware, including component amps (notice the S, you ll need anywhere from 2 to 4 amps) crossoves, new cabling, new head unit, extra component speakers/subbase/supertweeter... lotsa work involved.