After doing some more research on grounds and troubleshooting my own with
suggestions from listees, I decided to pull the radio again and really dig
into the wiring. Something just isn't right.
 To get a perspective on what I am dealing with click here:
http://www.intercom.net/~boatshop/VW-Wiring.jpg
to see a picture.
I found that (I think) the head unit as well as some other accessories were
not grounded at all. The 2 brown wires in the picture are original VW wiring
as best I can tell (Bentley is no help here). They are both spliced off of
the big black ground wire from the head units (Pioneer) wiring harness. The
right brown wire goes to the map light on the dash negative term.The left
wire *ends in a bunch of 7(one is 12G and the rest are 18G) other brown
wires that go nowhere*. They are all crimped together at the end and are
connected to nothing...dangling under the steering column. Question: are
these VW brown wires supposed to be ground-wires for the various
accessories?

People, please don't hack your stereo systems for the next owner to decipher
:) Label those wires or draw a map!

Thanks for any suggestions!
-Tracey
'85 Westy "Landyacht"
'78 Transporter "Da Bussa"
'68 Campmobile "Se Vende"
'68 Beetle Auto-Stick "Cali"
'78 Merz 240D 500+K
'81 Merz 300TD "Banana Boat"
'93 Honda Civic 223K and still kicking...
Etc...