My car is an old cat. '97 to be exact. So it's expected that its head unit will be as old as it is and may show signs of wear and tear. It manifested itself to its full extent in 2009 when the volume knob gave out.
Being practical about having to replace it, I went and looked for a replacement knob but the shop everyone suggested didn't have it so I had no choice anymore. I decided to just use an ipod with it using the tape converter thinking at least I can use the ipods volume control to still make the unit useable. I was happy with my solution. Ever since I was a kid, I learned to make do with what we had especially since times were tough on our family then. I enjoyed my solution until...
Dad flew in and borrowed the car. I forgot to tell him about the proper way to turn off the headlights because as I mentioned, the car's old, and it has its ways in its own way... ok there's a busted switch that I haven't replaced yet hehe
With that, he parked and didn't know that he left the headlights on. Long story short, it drained. When the batt's drained, power comes to zero. Now why is this important?
Alpine head units tend to pull its volume down to 0 once there's a power loss since it "forgot" it's last setting due to the loss of power delivered to the unit. Now remember my solution? No more. With volume in 0, the unit's rendered useless already.
FAST FORWARD...
So I've been looking at a replacement and wanted it to be Alpine as well. It's soooo hard to look for alpine locally these days. I even asked for help from my auto buddies to let me know and that they did.
My friend Ariane told me that he saw the unit he was recommending last year in a shop near my place so I took it.
Brought it this afternoon and didn't think installation would be that long. It's all good though. It's no big deal.
I was just a bit disappointed that despite having USB, an audio in, and bluetooth, I couldn't connect my ipod on the fly. I had to buy a cable (which I didn't), just to connect my ipod. I figured that the USB would do. I'm too digital anyway that I have other means to play music. So I'm going with a thumb drive into USB instead, or use the audio in and plug my ipod, or even just burn preselected mp3s onto CD since it can also read CD/MP3s. I realized when I got home that bluetooth was only for handsfree phonecalls, which is not a bad thing really. I was just expecting more like connecting ipod via bluetooth and controlling everything via the front panel but I guess that was asking too much and had it been the case, maybe it might've ended up being more expensive than it is.
At the end of the day, I'm a happy man. Finally have my music back to rock the car during southern traffic...
All smiles for silverfilter :)
Cy
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