So Howzabout That Becker Headunit?

So less than a month into the ownership of my first Ferrari, I have learned that everyone who said the Becker stereo was horrible was wrong. Horrible doesn't begin to describe what a wretched box of awful that this thing is. I can only speculate that someone at Becker had some serious dirt on both Ferrari and Porsche management to force them to use their product in otherwise spectacular automobiles.

After reading a few threads here of other F430 owners, it looked like swapping the head unit would be quite straightforward, and indeed it is. There has been a bit of confusion about whether one can simply plug in the factory harness or if an adapter is needed. Some have had success without the adapter, others had had to make modifications.

I won't try to reinvent what others have already done and described, but will make a few recommendations that will hopefully help others who would like to upgrade the head unit.

There are many choices in head units, and even a Kraco tape deck from 1986 would be an improvement. The problem is that all of the manufacturers of car audio gear assumes that every buyer wants a deck with a combination of shiny black plastic, fake chrome, and flashing lights. Sony does make a really nice unit with a solid aluminum face plate, but it's $1500, so short of buying that one, pick a deck with the features that you want and an amount of dreck you can live with. A must for me was a rear USB input and the ability to play lossless files, either flac or WMA lossless, and a display that would give me at least two lines of information. Bluetooth was also important, and most decks offer it, unlike the ability to play lossless music, which surprised me. I ended up with the Pioneer DEH-X8700BS, which was less than $140 from Amazon. Besides having the features that I wanted, it's actually not too bad looking and does sound pretty good. In addition to the head unit, I bought a 128 GB flash drive to hold all the music that I will need for $29, a Euro antenna adapter for $6.50, and a Metra 70-1784 wiring harness adapter (VW/Audi) for $4 and change, all Amazon Prime.

As mentioned in other threads, there are 'A', 'B', & 'C' connectors that plug into the back of the factory stereo. The 'A' & 'B' connectors will plug into the Metra adapter, the 'C' connectors carry the signal from the CD changer, so you can just leave those unplugged. Once you remove the Becker with the two keys, have a look at the sticker on top of the chassis which will show you the wiring connections. Compare these with your new deck and see how it matches up. For my Pioneer deck, the 'B' connector is all eight of the speaker wires and matched up correctly with the four conventional colors. On the Metra harness, only four of the eight pins are in place. Metra includes two additional pins and wires that snap into the connector ang I had to add one to the #5 location which supplies the signal to turn on the amplifier. One thing to watch out for is the power connections. Some use the red wire for constant power and the yellow one for switched power, others the opposite. For connection to the Pioneer, it was yellow to red and yellow to red. Solder everything together and then it should be as simple as installing the retaining cage, plugging everything in, and sliding the deck into place. All that is left is to run the microphone cable (if applicable) and the USB cable.

Including pulling the deck, soldering the 13 wires, and putting the new deck in place, it should take less than an hour. Not quite as easy as the 10 minutes that it takes to hard wire a V1 or Escort, but it ain't much tougher and should be doable by pretty much anyone.


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