Back in my teenage days, everytime riding in someone's car I like admiring the fancy dashboard design especially those with stereo/equalizer. It's mesmerizing looking at the Led level meter dancing over the beautiful illuminate dashboard. I thought to myself one day I'm gonna own a car with my favourite audio system in it. Today I finally possess a set of Alpine (CDA-9855) combo with a tape player with Sound Field Processor. (Alpine TDA-5643) Cleaning of the pinch rollers and tape head prior testing.
Offline testing prior installation. A lot of customization to be done as post millennium cars mostly do not have detachable stereo unit, it came with fixed player. It took 5 hours to complete the installation. Here is a demo after installation where I'm playing the unit with a cassette.
What car is it in ? You are right about modern cars having no space for such devices. I have commented before about in the 1990s fitting car radio cassettes in three different girls cars as in 1980s (and 1970s) cars you were lucky to get a push button radio. I recently spent hours on the internet looking for a picture of this Philips. I kept finding loads of a similar model without a display as like in my Vectra the cars own display was used. In the mid 1990s I bought one new for £100 and fitted in in my Nissan when the factory fitted radio cassette started playing up. By about the year 2000, Rapid Radio where I bought it turned into Rapid PCs. They are still going doing things like laptop repairs.
Wow, it's soo beautiful, Ken. I love it. I loved those high class car players with Dolby B and even C and motorized mechanisms. Alpine, Pioneer, SONY, AIWA, Kenwood made really good ones.
My car is the 8th generation Honda Accord, year 2010. I have to sacrifice the general compartment storage in order to mount the device and play through the aux in of the main unit
Yes Hugo, most of the top notch are Japanese brands that dominated the car audio market. European and US very limited those I know off are Blaupunkt, Audiovox and Rockford Fosgate.
I think I have one of those, or a model very like it, originally fitted to 90's Range Rovers and branded "Range Rover". I've been hanging onto it in the hope I can get it modified for an Aux / BT input to fit in my Classic RR.
Do you have full control of the tape player with the CD player? Or do you operate the tape player with its own buttons?
Hi @Clinton Nicholson - the tape player with built in sound processor is meant to pair up with the head unit in order to work.
You need to upgrade your car! Possibly a 1986-89 Accord with digital dashboard to match with the Alpine!
Or maybe a Vauxhall / Opel Astra GTE. Like the car stereos this was considered to be incredibly futuristic at the time and only came on the top of the range GTE model. Back in 1989 a colleague bought one new.
