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Why do the automobile manufacturers even try? I guess the car-buying public won’t buy a vehicle without a radio of some kind… but do they have to put in crap? Ford wants to add $550 to your sticker price for a factory “Audiophile” AM/FM in-dash 6-disc CD/MP3 changer. Really? Five hundred and fifty bucks? How good can a $550 in-dash 6-disc CD changer sound? Probably not as good as this kick-ass stereo!
When I bought my truck, it had a crap factory radio that sounded like… well, a factory radio for a pickup truck. Imagine that. It sounded flat and lacked any real fidelity. The truck came with four paper cone speakers that looked they came from my grandfather’s old Philco radio, and a boring factory radio with gigantic buttons to accommodate even the stubbiest of sausage link fingers. It’s was all such crap. I had to raise the volume past 50% just to drown out the road noise, and the tape player had a nasty whine when playing a cassette. A cassette! How quaint.
This weekend, I replaced the circa 1930s paper cone speakers with some polypropylene cone coaxial speakers from MTX. The doors got a pair of MTX TDX6502s, and behind the seats got a pair of MTX TDX6802s. Both pairs used the the existing factory holes. In fact, MTX bills this particular line of speakers as “engineered to provide ease of installation for direct OEM replacement applications while offering extremely accurate music reproduction.” Whatever. All I know is the difference in sound is amazing! It’s full and bright, and I can drown out the road noise at less than 20% volume.
Of course, new speakers were only half the job. I also put a new Panasonic head unit in the dash. This baby is pretty cool. It’s got a 3D dot matrix screen thats not limited to ten 7-segment LED characters for displaying artist and/or title. In addition to playing CDs, it’ll also play a CD-R or CD-RW disc loaded with MP3 or WMA files. With some optional gear, this head unit will control a satellite radio receiver, a CD changer, and an iPod. It’s even got an infrared remote control!
It was fun installing the gear in the truck this afternoon. The head unit was easy. Just crimp 15 wires from the radio harness to 15 similarly colored wires on another harness, connect it to the factory wiring connectors, and you’re done. Monkey’s play. The speakers were a little more involved. Removing big plastic door panels tethered by even more wiring harnesses was fun (read: a pain in the ass), and contorting myself to reach the speakers behind the seat gave me a sore shoulder. Today was also the hottest day of the year. So, imagine you pre-heated the oven to bake some chocolate chip cookies, then decided to climb on in to install a radio and some speakers.
But, in the end, it’s all worth it. I can’t wait to go for a drive.
I can even customize the background image on this new stereo… http://www.wafwot.com/blog/wp-photos/new_stereo_mustang.jpg Sorry for the crap cell phone image… but you should at least be able to tell the image is of the 1968 Mustang I sold a day after I got my truck.
That is just elite!