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Installation

Before receiving the deck, I had to find a plastic console for my car. Quite a few cars use a proprietary Stereo mold that only fits the factory decks (good theft deterrent?). For this reason, I had to find a console that would fit my car. A lot of stereo retailers carry some generic molds that will fit pretty well any car. For cars which already fit regular sized decks, your install should be easy as pie... My Ford’s stereo console is oval shaped (includes the heating/Air Con Dial), and was a bit harder to find. The local FutureShop happened to have one left in stock, and I nabbed it. The great thing is that I only paid $20-30 CDN when I bought it since this is what the salesman quoted me over the phone. The thing is, this piece actually retails for $80! What a deal!

Box's Contents & rear view of the deck

Ok, I wasn’t confident enough to install the unit myself (in case anything were to go wrong) so I got the pros at FutureShop to pop my baby in. The install was only $40 so that wasn’t a biggie... I was able to watch the whole procedure, and the first thing they did was to screw on the harness that came with the deck. Once that was done, they removed my old mother of a stereo using the regular stereo prongs (do these things have a name?) and detached the stereo wiring & heating controls. With the old stereo gone, they sat the new mold in place and made sure the new deck would fit just right. The console wasn’t locked yet, the wiring still needed to be connected, and from what I saw, it was just a matter of plugging in the appropriate plugs into the new deck as well as the heating controls into their right spots & voila! Since the new deck had ISO/DIN compliant wiring, it would have been a cinch of an install even for me... Sheesh, and why did I pay that 40 bucks again?

First Impressions

As soon as the installation was complete, I drove out of the shop, pulled to the side of the road, and made sure everything was in check. There’s no point leaving if there’s an obvious problem that you are able to notice right away. I tested out the radio, the MP3 CD I had prepared earlier, a regular audio CD, and everything seemed to work well. Sweet! I fooled around with the Bass, Treble, and H-Bass controls to get that right combination of the two while I drove home.

While the stereo console looked less styl’in than the factory one put in my Ford, the metallic looking AIWA deck made up for its visual deficiencies. The blue edge pieces really make the stereo a work of art, although I have to say when toggling the volume using the jog dial, it can be a little distracting when the sides light up with each adjustment. Besides the great Blue/putter coloured combination, I really took a liking to the green AIWA light when you detach the faceplate. That was an excellent touch.

I read in several messageboards that people have trouble getting that “right” angle to attach the faceplate to the deck. I have to admit that, in the first few times I tried putting it on, it either came off as soon as I let go, or it just would click in properly. I found that if you place the left side of the faceplate (left notch)in line with the piece that sticks out on the deck, then (while keeping the display face the way you would normally see it when installed correctly) slowly push the right side of the plate towards the dash and it should click and sit in its spot. If you take a look at the notches on either side, you’ll notice that there are two angles you can use to pop the faceplate on. This method I just mentioned has not given me any problems since I started using it.

Features & more Thoughts

Wireless Remote

As I fooled around with the features more and more, I found the layout of the buttons, and the jog dial to be very well thought out. Although you can use the wireless remote that attaches to your steering wheel to adjust volume, skip tracks, and move to from album to album, some people may prefer to access the deck directly. Since the player may have been designed for Asian markets, the sensor for the remote is found on the very right side of the deck (it’s a reddish pink colour), the remote doesn’t work as well as one would like. The sensor for the remote is on the under side and that is quite of a ways away from my steering wheel to the other side of the deck making it hard for the deck’s sensor to detect any commands. I have resorted to directly accessing the deck’s buttons right from the start. All of the essential buttons are clustered in the very left side of the plate making it very easy to toggle whatever you wish. By using your index finger to adjust the volume using the dial, you will notice you can easily Fast-Forward or Rewind tracks (right of the jog dial), change Album/Directory (lower right of Track Buttons) or even change the Device you wish to listen to (Circular button above Track). Opposite this Function button changes your device when pushed and cycles between FM1 Presets, FM2 Presets, FM3 Presets, AM1 Presets, AM2 Presets, AUX, and DISC (CD). I have found this design to be a little frustrating to use since in missing your desired Function (Say DISC), you must keep scrolling through those other functions to get back to DISC. Think about it… That’s another 5 pushes of that button… To make matters worst, if you opt to get a changer hooked up to your deck that’s one more Function to scroll through... I hope this design gets improved in the next model.

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