I'm beginning to think my old Kenwood MP3 CD player isn't long for this life. I've been on a spending splurge this week stereo wise.
The Rangie has six uprated speakers in the standard positions, a Sony X-plod amp, and an Alpine Bass Engine sub in the boot.
This set up works well.
However, the head unit position in a Range Rover Classic is on a bloody silly angle, it's virtually vertical, but not quite.
The head unit is now 3 years old, and has been in a lot of my cars, however, it's beginning to take an age to find discs, ages to find the next track, and is coming up with TOC errors more often by the week. It was doing this in the Merc as well, so I don't think it's entirely due to the angle it is mounted at. It also does it whether or not the car is stationary or moving, so I doubt it's the shock absorbing mechanism that is playing up.
I've run cd lens cleaning discs through it, with very little success. Tonight I opened the player up for the first time and cleaned the lens in the time honoured "cotton wool bud and lens cleaning solution" manner, and it's still taking its time to find tracks, load discs up. Not made any difference really, although it is slightly better at keeping hold of a tune, instead of pausing and trying to find it's feet.
*so*
Do I buy one of these Sony MP3 CD players I can get rather cheaply - i.e. meant to be £200, but I can get for £150, an Alpine one for the same deal, or get the Kenwood serviced?
Problem I'm having is most new head units seem to be some bloody stupid colour like bright blue, display wise, or they have all the toys but only display in capitals and have loads of stupid "dancing horse" type display pictures.
All I want is a great sounding, quick loading, MP3 cd player with a good tuner, sub level controls, green display (pref switchable to amber if needed), a decent stable inbuilt amp with "50watts"+ [1], bass / mid / treble controls would be nice.
Don't give a toss about being able to show jpegs on the screen, motorised front panels, flashing displays, "equalisers" etc, just want the bloody thing to work reliably for a few years.
[1] Yes, I know the quoted power outputs are a load of Tottenham, but I want something that'll play quite loud without distortion / needing another couple of amps.