Vehicle: 380 SL, 500 SEL (W140- the King of the Road!)
Location: Lexington, Kentucky
Posts: 617
I STRONGLY disagree. I sent my BOSE amp to Dr. Don in texas and he overhauled the amp for under $400.
If you want replace the stock BOSE bring barrels of cash! Nothing is compatable and the entire system must be replaced. Because the removal of the BOSE system is so labour intensive on a W140 some shops will politely decline to replace one with an aftermarket.
__________________
1993 500 SEL (W140-the King of the road!)
1984 380 SL (Der Panzerwagon)
You know you're German if:
You went to school in a Gymnasium
You check your shoes for candy on December 6
You have real candles on your Christmas tree
You know a Frankfurter is a person not a hotdog
Schnitzel with noodles is your favorite meal, not a song in a cheesy musical!
You drive the Autobahn in a Mercedes-Benz at the speed of sound!
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.
__________________
Mercedes-Benz, W140 S class 300SE
Because the removal of the BOSE system is so labour intensive on a W140 some shops will politely decline to replace one with an aftermarket.
actually, as i mentioned above, these shops (aka best buy and circuit city) being specialized in rice hondas and soccer minivans, while operated by highschoolers who think they are engineers, while being paid $6.50-$11 (depending on the state) they look at the W140 and they ger introduced to new concepts, susch as wire color code consisting of green, red, and gray and they think
"this doenst make any sense??"
they look at the 7 channel amp and think
"what is that for? cars should have 4 channels"
they look at center speaker and think
"thats a nice bose antenna" or "nice microphone"
they measure the speaker resistance with an ohm meter and say:
"your speakers reading 1ohm, they must be blown"
then after a while they decide "you know what? this car is too complicated and doesnt match what we learned in the 8 hours bootcamp when i first srated at best buy, would you be interested in a DUAL brand head unit?"
thats why they dont work on them. other than that, running wires in the W140 is hands down the easiest car i have EVER worked on.
Are the Bose speakers card or resin cone? Card degrades over the years, especially in a humid climate.
they are made of paper, but from what i saw so far, i have not seen a single one with aged cones, the paper they used last amazigly tender and soft, even 16 years later...
Vehicle: 380 SL, 500 SEL (W140- the King of the Road!)
Location: Lexington, Kentucky
Posts: 617
And actually the cone doesn't degrade as much as the foam cushion around the cone. The foam is replaceable. I just had to have it done on my Marantz speakers at home. 40 bucks for two and they sound as wonderful as they did before.
love the system. Sounds better than nearly every stock and aftermarket set up any of my friends have.
Maybe not as loud as mentioned before but the sound balance is just perfect...never flat and an amazingly perfect amount of bass. And its plenty loud enough... i can't see myself wanting to blow my ears out.
My system is still better than the ones in my friends cars, better than the E36 M3 and a 2003 Audi A4, the only people with better sound quality have had custom Alpine systems installed.
__________________
1994 S420-86,000 miles
Appearance:
Xenon headlights/clear corners, black S600 grill
Performance:
HiPerformance Chip+Dual K&N's (300+ BHP, 330+ lb/ft torque=0-60 in 6.8) and kept in great shape.
Such an amazing feet..
Linear Mode
