coulda bin. they were more popular in the 90s and early 2000s. i always used kenwood or pioneer decks, preferably the highend models (excelon or premier). later i had a clarion deck in my impreza wagon (was cheap and had HD radio built in!!). was no wheres as good, powerful or customizable as any of the kenwood excelon decks i had had before. have a newer excelon deck buried somewhere in my basement that was going to go into the jetta, but then i sold the jetta...i even paid extra for the weird proprietary VW adaptor. the golf has too good a stereo (plus it has the backup camera and menu built in) to replace with that, plus i probably won't keep it too much longer.theholycow wrote:Come to think of it, the single-DIN unit bouncing around in my yard plow truck that was given to me by a friend, half-ass wired in and just sitting loosely in the huge hole where the OEM radio died, might be an Eclipse. Seems to work ok enough to keep me in music while plowing my snow. No idea how old it is.
there has to be a way to add an in-line amp to boost the power. it's gonna be a big headache on a VW, but it can be done. there are also ways to replace the whole headunit, but i wouldn't do that on one of these touchscreen VWs (see above reply to cow). to boot, newer OEM stereos are WAY better than the ones we had even 10 years ago. more power, better EQ and adjustability, better speakers, etc. if you play around with the adjustments a little, you can optimize the sound. you may not be able to blast it without drama like i can (to a point) with my fender setup, but you should be able to get decent sound at reasonable volume levels.Rope-Pusher wrote:Back in days of olde, there was actually a lawsuit against carmakers requiring them to offer a radio-delete option for those who were installing their own audio systems and didn't want to pay for the factory system just to then have to riop it out and pitch it. Really, dealers were the muscle behind the lawsuit - they were making big money ordering the vehicles without and then installing sound systems on their own. Radio-delete pkg came with wiring for power and speakers and the antenna. Just needed to install speakers, "deck" and amp(s) yourself. They could equip the vehicle to the level that a particular customer wanted, but on the low-priced side of things the sound systems they installed were worse than what the factory installed, especially with respect to FM tuning and reception. In these modern thymes we live in, sound systems are integrated with vehicle system controls and styled uniquely for a given vehicle. Aftermarket sound system suppliers have to be hurting.Teamwork wrote:I knew about Eclipse decks (yeah I am going to call them that) but I only used Kenwood in my youth. Really have nothing bad to say either the single/double din units honestly are probably better then some of the crap they have in mainstream cars today.
I'm pretty sad that it's so difficult to go aftermarket on stereo and speakers. I go through car builders a lot just for the fun of it and it's getting ridiculous how an audio upgrade for the vehicle is either: A) on a top level trim / B) roped in a package that's expensive with a bunch of other crap that's questionable on the want list. All a part of the game I suppose... would love if it could be a la carte. The one thing I really enjoyed about the marketing with my GTI for 2015 was that I could get bi-xenon + a performance package a la carte on a base level trim- fairly priced IMO too. Even if they packaged those two things together I probably (and most) would be okay with it...