salannelson

I just bought a Sony CDX GT340 deck. I love it. It works great but I have one problem with it. It's BRIGHT! I've looked in the manual numerous times, and the dim feature that is available only dims the display and not the extremely bright blue buttons.

Is there any way I can dim the buttons? Any way at all? It's killing my eyes at night. Maybe I missed something in the manual?

Thank you.

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

hmm, usually there is only one dim mode and it works for every display light, not just the screen. did you hook up the deck ILLUM wire to the ILLUM wire of the factory harness? that makes the deck auto-dim when you turn the park lights on. be sure you look up exactly which wires they are and do not get them confused. do NOT use the DIMMER wire at all. be sure you look up the wire color of the sony deck for ILLUM wire, then attach it to the ILLUM wire in the harness once you figure out what the wire colors are. do not assume they are the same colors. this is very important. if you hook it up wrong, or mess with the dimmer wire, you can blow out your entire dash light circuit and have no dash lighting at all, permanently.

Mr.VTEC

Yeah usually there is a wire to hook it to the dimmer.....but if not couldnt you put in a resistor on the ilumination wire?

salannelson

how would i figure out what the ILLUM wire colors are? i unfortunately bought my car without a manual. it's a 99 EX Coupe. if anyone could tell me the color of the wire that would be great.

also here is the wiring diagram. i don't see an ILLUM type wire anywhere. i could just be overlooking it
http://www.docs.sony.com/release/CDX...tall_EN_FR.pdf

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

its possible the deck does not come with the wire then. otherwise it would be in the sony diagram. have you looked behind the deck at the actual wires? some decks will have small paper labels on each wire, and they may have forgot to include it in the diagram. its worth a look i guess. if you find it, i can look up which color of the oem harness is the illum wire to connect to.

salannelson

that would be greatly appreciated. i'll check it out tonight. i'm just worried that the wire will not be there, and i won't be able to do anything about this problem.

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

this is a last resort if you really like and want to keep the deck. if the faceplate detatches, usually you can carefully open it up and put some sort of tint in front of the leds to make them dimmer. like some smoke paint you can dab on with a qtip.

salannelson

i might do that if all else fails because i really don't want to return this one and put in a new one.

thanks so much for your help ill get back to you

salannelson

i checked in the back of the stereo... unfortunately no ILLUM wire. i took the faceplate apart and spray painted the buttons with a color that was close to the color of the lights. it did help a bit, but i think i'm going to try a different color to make it a little less bright.

thanks for that "last resort" idea.

gearbox

iTrader: (95)

you can try smoke metalcast paint. it will darken any light passing thru but not change the color. keep building up the coats til it gets to the darkness you want.

jsmithe2010

Blue lighting seems to be the color in vogue, but I never like it. My old head came with blue LEDs and every time I changed volume, the blue would flash to add insult to injury! Blue suppose to be the most irritating color of the spectrum. Now I don't like the all-Red of some American cars either. Toyotas' amber is just right by me. My current Civic got enough blue that's just below my annoyance threshold. Now if I can just replace that darned digital speedo... don't they know digital was 90's fad?

salannelson

Yes, blue is without a doubt the worst color for your night vision. I used to have a pontiac grand prix and the only thing i liked about it was the red lighting scheme. easy on the eyes at night!

i dont know if its just me, but i like to drive at night with the dimmer set as low as it can possibly go, so obviously, this deck lighting deal is bothering the hell out of me

quikslvrr

Yeah i had the same problem too with the same deck. The easiest way i found to fix it was to take it apart, unsolder the volume **** and put 2-4 layers of kapton tape on the leds. It helped alot! ...and its alot easier to work with compared to paint. Hope it helps! I could post some pics if needed.