Becker 1432

[Tiberion]

I just noticed that my radio is not lit until I turn it on. Should the radio be lit when my lights are on?

Thanks
1992 300E 115,000

[Badinfo]

in a word, no...

[David C Klasse]

Your stereo lights are working as designed. THey all do this, TMK.
:p

[Tiberion]

Oh well. I guess I will just fumble around in the dark....

[400E]

The power button is illuminated on mine when the radio is off but lights are on . . .

[carman850]

400E is right, the "pwr" button and Mercedes logo on the cassette cover should be illuminated.

There is a tiny bulb on the radio faceplate illuminates them, it's powered on as soon as key is at "on" position, actually one of the wires at the back of the headunit supplies power to this tiny bulb, my bulb was burnt 2 months ago, bought some from Radio shark, soldering one onto the faceplate solved the prolem easily.

[Badinfo]

hmmm.... the light never worked for me! Oh well, I gues it was fused before I got the car. Interestingly though, the power switch is illuminated after I turn(ed) the radio on, perhaps the system had 2 bulbs? Oh well, it doesn't really matter, as I upgraded to an AIWA mp3/cd player a couple weeks ago... the motorized face never fails to amuse me....

[carman850]

Hi Badinfo,

The reason you see the "PWR" button illuminated after you turn on the radio is that the whole faceplate is illuminate by 5-6 tiny bulbs, and they use a kind of transparent plastic to refract light evenly, so even you lose 1 or 2 bulbs, you still see all buttons illuminated.

But this special button is powered separately, and it is covered by a black cap, which isolates it from refracting light to other buttons, it only illuminates the "pwr" button and MB logo on the cassette cover. They must put a lot of thoughts into it, no wonder Bcker 1432s are so expensive.

[Badinfo]

yea, it was a pretty advanced unit, I especially liked how you could type in the radio frequency...

[Tiberion]

So, are we saying that there is a bulb under the PWR button that has burnt out?

[carman850]

Yes, that bulb probably burnt out, but it could also be the wire that supplies power this bulb.

[Tiberion]

Well, if the radio and the headlights are on the PWR button is lit, else not. But, I did pull the faceplate just for grins. The bulb is buried pretty well. Maybe there's an elevtrical connection that's failed.

[carman850]

The bulb is so tiny that it's hard to tell it's good or not, if you have a multimeter, you can measure the resistance directly from the PCB without desoldering the bulb, that bulb has a resistance of several ohms when cold, in my case I measured an infinity which indicated the bulb was burnt. After I removed it, even with the bad bulb in my hand, I could hardly tell the difference from a good one.