Any car hi fi nuts?

[atomant48]

As per the title. I've got a whole bunch of 80's Alpine gear - amps, speakers, various cd units. I dabbled with it back in the 90s but I've been slowly collecting for the "period" install into my resto project.

Anyone on the forum into the old stuff?

 

[Kayos]

Yes, maybe not quite 80's but I will be running a 3522s on my tweets (maybe mids depending on setup) and a DRE-A200 active crossover, rest of my amps are various V12's

I like the modern head units tho, CDA-117Ri currently, I did buy it brand new in 2010 when it was released

 

[atomant48]

Yep I've got some 3552s and 4s. I got hold of a brand new 7980 head unit a while back - one of the 3 cd in dash changers. I like the style of the old big chocolate block green buttons.

 

[Kayos]

There's a pic of mine in my freelander thread, I changed the illumination to green. I nearly bought one of the big flip out hu's once, 7 something with the copper chassis and no internal amps but I decided I wanted iPod control. I regret it sometimes

 

[winchman]

Now could you answer a question for me?
I have Blaupunkt ODC172 Rated at 80W RMS
http://www.soundmasterscotland.com/blaupunkt_odc172_top_of_the_range_speakers_i019102.aspx
In my camper and have a couple of spare sets in the garage for fitting in my Picasso.
In the camper the head unit is only 20W RMS so they only really sound good when turned to 27 or above, would adding an amp drive them better at low volume?

 

[Kayos]

In a word

Yes

 

[winchman]

}So what size should I get?

 

[steveo3002]

was into it back in the day , still got some early rockford gear in my golf which sounds very nice still

 

[atomant48]

}So what size should I get?

You can never have too much!

 

[hotrodder]

}So what size should I get?

What sort of budget? Pretty much any reasonable quality amp is gonna be an improvement over the headunits built in jobby adding 'headroom' i.e. power reserves to handle the dynamic range of music without clipping. All hifi is plagued by BS, car hifi especially with all sorts of fairy tales claimed by the majority of manufacturers whether it's outrageous wattage claims for a headunit with a 10A fuse in the back of it or random nonsense about speaker wattage... it's easier to damage a speaker with an underpowered amp by the turning the volume up until it starts clipping, especially if putting low frequencies through a full range speaker or a midbass driver for example (using a capacitor as a cheap high pass filter)

 

[winchman]

Thanks
I was hoping to get a second hand one for about £30 -50, I do have some old JBL ones in the garage I bought in a job lot as I wanted the head unit, I will power one up and see if it works.
The speakers I have are components so have separate cross overs

 

[atomant48]

So it turns out the "brand new in the box" head unit I've got might not be!

I've bench tested it. The discs will load, the radio works, but it searches all 3 cartridges and then spits out the discs. I assume the laser is not reading or is dirty etc. Bit of a pain.

Anyone know of somewhere that will take a look and fix it?

 

[slim_boy_fat]

I assume the laser is not reading or is dirty etc.

Might be worth trying one of those disc-cleaning CDs, unless it spits it out too.