If you have a Model Three, and you actually use it as intended as a clock radio, You may have noticed that the light in the clock is a lot brighter than it needs to be in a darkened bedroom.* Well, maybe not for everybody, but soon after its introduction I had heard of people that wanted the light removed, and somebody showed me how to do it at the time, but I’ve since forgotten. But Bruce knows how, in fact he says that he can dim it properly by adding a resistor in line (makes sense). but he’s too chicken to do it because it’s just too subjective as to how dim it should be and Bruce hates to disappoint people. I now can install a dimmer knob that does it nicely for $40
*During the design process for the Model Three, Bruce and two other people (who will remain nameless at this time) took a production sample of the Model Three into a darkened men’s room (it was the only room with no windows) in the Tivoli building to evaluate the brightness of the clock light and they all thought it was as dim as it needed to be.
I spent a lot of time in a photographic darkroom in one of my past lives and I can tell you that it takes a good 15 -25minutes for your eyes to adjust to complete darkness and anything that looks really, really dim the minute you turn out the lights will seem a heck of a lot brighter after 15 minutes.
John
It can now be revealed that I was the second of the three people who participated in the “men’s room meeting”. I advocated for a rear pot to be able to manually adjust the clock light but was overruled mainly due to cost. Eventually our then German distributor installed such pots for customers for about USD $70. I also wanted to change the LED color from white to blue and had it done on the Model Three I still own today.
Peter Skiera, General Manager, Como Audio