Has anyone seen old Sony audio equipment with a very dim LED backlight on the LCD front display? I want to know if this is a common problem before I start tearing apart this thing I got from the thrift shop #askfedi #sony

(I pulled the maintenance manual on it, it isn’t a VFD)

@flyingsaceur

I've seen it happen with clock radios with reaaaaly high hours on them

@kilroy_was_here yes, this. Any idea if it’s th LED failing or a resistor/transistor elsewhere?

@flyingsaceur

Sorry for not replying earlier, you caught me when I was going to bed and there was a power outage yesterday so I forgot to do it yesterday.

I'd test the voltage going to the backlight first. If it seems low I'd start looking up the chain for bad components. If the voltage seems fine, I'd conclude the LED backlight was weak and think of ways to fix it. Whether that's adding new LEDs to the existing ones or replacing them like replacing grain of wheat bulbs in meters.