Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums Modifications Audio MP3 CD Head Unit Experience?

I just visited Best Buy today hoping to get some hands-on experience with the Aiwa. I lucked out and got about 5-10 minutes before the sales people noticed me crouched down by the unit (why would they display this thing 2 feet off the floor?!). As expected, I was unimpressed by the real estate taken up by a largely worthless mono signal level display (about 20% of the entire DIN surface area). I was also unimpressed by the buttons--small and laid out rather non-intuitively. To make matters worse, the time delays/scroll speed in the folder and title text displays were making me impatient in the store--they'd be worthless or even dangerous if you tried to read them while driving. These may be adjustable. Understandably, they didn't have the wheel-mounted remote on display, but the review's description sounds nice.

Long story short, I guess I'll wait until the 2nd gen (and hopefully cheaper!) Kenwood or Sony's first gen (if you don't count wholely owned Aiwa).

Jake, Best Buy does carry both the 2-way and 3-way Pioneer speakers, some decent head units, etc. But they don't seem to offer a reasonable price advantage over Crutchfield and their labor charges (when they aren't free) are sky-high. You don't need to be very handy to replace the speakers or the head unit, but good instructions can be very handy. I'd recommend Crutchfield if you have a place where you can take your doors apart yourself--just be careful with the vapor barriers.