After Market Head Unit Install - Beats by Dr. Brizow

  The stereo in Helena has always sounded kind of like it was under water. There was no treble, and very little low end. I'm not the kind of stereophile guy who needs it to be perfect but, I'm surprised by the lack of quality from the 10 speaker system Helena came with. This is not the mac daddy Harmon Kardon system just the standard Hifi system. In researching further this seems to be a very common complaint from owners. I'm assuming that Germans didn't need to listen to the radio when they have the sweet sound of a 2.8 inline 6 purring down the autobahn. I'm not that lucky.

  So I started at the easiest place, change the head unit. You need two things for this: a radio adapter harness and an antenna adapter.

  There are several styles of antenna adapters out there. Given there is so little room behind the head unit, I went with an a pastor that had no pigtail. It simply plugs into the stereo flush and then, accepts the Nokia/euro style antenna plug.

  There is very little room behind the head unit for extra wires. This was the hardest part of the install for me. There is a vent and a backing plate the head unit rests on. On the back of the stock head unit there is a small plastic piece protruding proudly. This slides in to the hole on the backing plate.


  The pioneer head unit I had laying around did not have a hole big enough to accept the threads on the proudly protruding plastic piece. So, I ended up using a bolt that would fit and, wrapped it in e-tape. It worked fine for me. Little non factory approved as well. Eh.

  I had to eventually had to press the wires and the harness for the stereo gently back towards the left side of the din opening. It's also a tight spot but I found the harness and adapter would slide in. From what I can tell the whole harness is in between the dash cluster surround and the open space below. There is a cable that drives the air temperature from the center most vent. The harness was getting caught on it. After a twist of the harness as a whole it was like the harness I made was meant to fit there. Seriously, I struggled to get the head unit in there was a good bit. What finally brought it together was spinning the whole harness 360'. Weird. If you don't want to tear up stuff patience was definitely key for this one. 

Comparisons:

 The stock head unit has Amber back lights. The pioneer does not. The pioneer also has a removable face plate which doesn't really fit well into the space provided. The stock tape deck also provided control for the trunk mounted 6 disc changer. Unfortunately the previous owner/s lost the cartridge for it, making it useless right now. I don't really listen to CDs anymore anyway but, on occasion it is nice to have.

  At the end of all of this how does it sound? Well honestly it sounded almost exactly the same as the stock HU (head unit). However the Pioneer has more equalizer settings built in. With this I was able to get more mid and tweets out of the stock speakers. This was good. It made the install worth it to me.

  Now supposedly per the Internets my amp will die any moment because the signals from the stock unit are different than after market one. This is possible but, is that a bad thing? The stock amp does serve a purpose and honestly for 1998, I don't know too many other vehicles with 10 separated, amplified (all be it only slightly) speakers, and a CD changer. BMW didn't do a terrible job at all.

  The problem for me is that my wife's 00 Saturn with a factory tape deck and four speakers; sounds clearer and has more bass than my "luxury sport" mobile with 10. :/ I digress. Moving forward I'd like to try a few things to sort that out. If one bypasses the stock amp then, you will need to cross over the signals going to the front speakers. High, mid, low. A three way cross over.

  The rear deck speakers whether 4in or the hk 6x9s, have the sub and the tweet mounted separately. A two way cross over would be needed here.

  Would new coaxial style 6x9s without amplification sound better off the aftermarket HU? No cross over needed you can just send the full signal straight to the speaker. The rear makes sense and is easy to get at. The fronts however are not. 

  All the speakers wires do route to the amp mounted in the trunk. It's on the drivers side behind the carpeting. Accessing all the incoming and outgoing wires makes thoughts of aftermarket amps or bypassing it altogether easy. I just don't want to hack up and wiring.

  Clearly I'm still working through what to do in this area. More to come on this subject.

After thoughts: 

  If I was going to spend money on a fancy new head unit, it would have to have color adjustment to match the interior. No silver on it either. Black or grey only.

  All the stock speakers run through the factory "amp" which works as a crossover for the speakers and an amp for the "subs." 5.25s in the kick panels. 4s on the deck.

  Changing the amp or, running an amp bypass seems to be the preferred method depending on your budget and the quality of sound you are looking for.

  Not blown speakers will always sound better than blown ones.