Well, drat. One of the DIN cables into the Silverstone 980 trunk unit in my '93 500E is coming apart. The system worked acceptably beforehand, but I am now figuring on an upgrade and replacement job.

Part of that is Becker themselves. They sell a replacement cable for forty-odd bucks, which seems fair, but that obviously requires a lot of fuss to get at the back of the headend. I had a need for the car for a long drive, and requested on the Becker Board for a pinout/color code for the unit to see if I could effect quick temporary repairs (and not have to spend many hours with no audio).

Becker's staff couldn't be bothered to respond. I thus can't be bothered to spend even small amounts of money with them. Feh! How to lose a customer in one easy step.

I am not a heavy audiophile, but I do have a couple of design points in mind. I'd like MP3 capability, but I don't want one of those horrible Ginza-by-night overilluminated animated displays that seem to be in most modern MP3-capable headends. Save those for teenage rice racers in slammed Civics, please! Entirely inappropriate in the calm understated mature 500E interior.

What suggests itself is that I get at second hand one of the older Alpine cassette headends which speaks AI-net. Those are inexpensively available, visually restrained, offer decent clean amplification, and would let me put one of the new Alpine multidisc readers in the trunk -- there is at least one AI-net unit which takes MP3 discs.

I'm not sure what to plan on for speaker upgrades or additional amplification under this scheme. I am aware that the stock '93 500E speakers are going to be impedance-mismatched against a new system. Norm Anthony posted that he actually found his to be acceptable -- and I can try that myself -- but I should be thinking about options.

I don't want to sacrifice the tire well for a sub -- I carry tools and flares and emergency kit in there, and I am not sure that even much low-frequency sound gets out of the W124 trunk. It's sealed like a vault!

Perfectly happy to put a small amp either in the trunk or under a rear seat if it's called for. Plenty of room.

I know that the dash speaker slots want a five-inch instead of a 5.25 speaker, and that Scott at La Jolla Audio can get a drop-in Rainbow unit of good repute. Any others? Any numbers on mounting depth?

I will be pulling the door panels to reglue pulling of the leather over the map pockets, so that lets me think about doing the door speakers while I'm in there. Again, if memory serves, those are subs. And since they mostly face the seat sides, I don't see any point in putting anything other than subs behind those grilles.

I wonder if just decommissioning the door subs and making the grilles into snap-out hiding spaces might be a good idea. I try to take the V1 detector with me when I leave the car, but I can't always manage that, and internal places to hide it (plus a headend faceplate) would be nice.

Please, by all means, tell me what I'm getting wrong in the above, and chime in with any words of wisdom. Given the hassle of taking the 500E apart, and the respect and care it deserves, I want to get this right on the first pass.

s/b