I was excited for the opportunity to replace the CrapCo radio in my little motorhome when I found an Alpine CDE-153BT at Best Buy. It was a display unit with a substantial discount and lots of features that I liked, plus it was under my budgetary limit. It came bare bones with no box, no literature so the first thing that I did was download the entire owner's manual and print it out.
I cut the dash to accommodate the DIN requirements, hooked up every wire and listened to the silence. The unit powers up, searches for stations, loads a CD and looks like it will change tracks on the CD as well. I've run a separate ground wire...just in case. Behind the removable face plate is a recessed button that needed to be pressed when power was interrupted. I pushed it gently (how hard is hard enough?) It seemed to have a detent and accompanying click so I think that it should have reset whatever needed to be re-set. I've scrolled through the many options for source. After 4 hours of tearing the few hairs I have left I gave up. A buddy and I looked at it again and he noticed that you needed to select whether you were going to use the internal or external power amp...still the silence is deafening.
Thought before I returned the unit to Best Buy or Alpine, I'd reach out to see if you guys could shine a little light on the solution for me. Any thoughts or suggestions?
