Fink

Hey Slick, if your promoting the Pioneer then why do you have a link to an Alpine?

I would still go with Alpine, I work at Circuit City and we get much more positive feedback on the Alpine's than the Pioneers its amazing.

Fink

RLJSlick

My bad, I meant the Alpine. My wife Rav4 has the Pioneer.

SuperRunner98

Birdman, I've had the 7998 for just about 2 years and I definitely recommend it. As for the removable face, that's only as good as your motivation to take it off. The FantomFace at least looks like a deck with its face removed to the casual thief. It is an awesome deck with great SQ. Easy to get the most out of it if you're a novice too, with i-personalize. Good luck.

lee

i have the same HU as rlj..



it is absolutely hands down the best improvement ive made. the sound is incredible, even with stock speakers. gonna change those soon..

AFRunner

Man I've got the 850MP and I'm in the same boat as you. I want the color face. Oh-well, I keep it closed half the time for safety anyways. My wife says I'm like a bird or rodent, shiny things attract my attention.
Aaron

TRD04RUNNER

a friend of mine work at circuit city and he said that 5 out of 10 pioneer HU they sold get return for problem and the alpine HU barely ever get return.

PoBoy

That's bogus info. Worked /partially owned a car stereo shop (Car Toys on 8Mile in Detroit)...we always prefered Pioneer over Alpine even through we made a much bigger profit on Alpines (can you say overpriced). Alpine's burn up much more easily. Now Im NOT saying Alpine is crap or its a bad unit...ITS NOT. But Pioneer has a better track record as far as servicing goes. THis does not mean that if you buy a Alpine...its going to break. Im just saying that Pioneer has a better track record. Anything you buy, you will run the risk of breaking though...so when buying from a big company, you shouldnt worry about it breaking (that's why they have waranties)...you should compare features and quality...not reliability.

Pioneer is also ahead of the game when it comes to technology and features. Alpine has always been 6+ months behind Pioneer and Kenwood. All 3 companies make good equipment...but Alpine is almost always the 3rd runner when it comes to new HU tech.

IMOP - Alpine is the Bose of car stereo. Overpriced and when talking about high end units...Alpine has the same quality as Kenwood and Pioneer.

AkitaDog

iTrader: (1)

I have the Alpine 7998 for about years also and would recommend it.

Most poeple eventually leave the detachable faces on after time anyway.

User 051420

I just got back from my favorite local car stereo place..my Rockford amp's MOSFET chip blew out..warranty luckily..

I had asked about Alpine and the new one that supposedly will easily support iPod...They said they refuse to carry anything Alpine sells anymore. Apparently Alpine has a crappy warranty policy about LCD's and such. If 1 pixel dies, you're stuck with it..you have to wait for THREE to die, in different places...just for warranty repair! Also, the shop had way too many Alpine returns..the build quality just isn't that great...

Mohamed

I have the 9815, it supposedly is a good deck, but to me, it's confusing as hell to program, there is time correction capabilities, and an Equilizer band. Well sure as Quantitative Chemistry do I know anything about equilizers, if I could go back, I personally would have bought a Kenwood like I had in my 4Runner, that was a perfect deck for me.

Another thing that annoys me about the deck is, no RDS, when every new deck (included stock decks now) have that feature.

By the way the 9815 is discontinued that why they are on backorder.

stoutshady

What's RDS? I have the 9815 and love it... This is last year's model, that's why it's discontinued.

Mohamed

RDS = Radio Data Service, basically you recieve text from the Radio station, helps in identifying what song is being played currently and also you get weather updates and such from certain stations.

stoutshady

That sounds pretty cool, I bet it's available on this year's models. It's a feature I could live without... FM sucks compared to XM in sound and programming.

Mohamed

That's another problem, no one in town has a modulator for that deck, so no XM for me either. I'm just going to have to resort to Crutchfield very soon here, if no one is going to sell them.

bamachem

I actually prefer Clarion Pro Audio to any of them. I've always had good quality out of clarion and they have nice asthetics to boot. If I had to choose between Pioneer and Alpine, I'd choose the Pioneer. As far as quality goes, I think Pioneer is a hair above Alpine, but Premier is WAAAY above Alpine. Just my $0.02...

gtm130

save yourselves all the agrivation and go with kenwood excelon, if you must go with pioneer or alpine, alpine is a stronger company, pioneer mass produces with crazy colors and graphics looking for a profit, and alpine spends quality time in r&d on the important stuff like sound. if you can swing it though.... kenwood.... http://www.kenwoodusa.com/product/pr...productId=2596

all the bells and whistles plus top of the line sound quality that blows away pioneer.

ps. ive had pioneer before (broke) and sony (sucked), neither comes close to half of what my kenwood is like

havic

Some of the features that come with these headunits, people will never use, and it's just another way to make money. The main reason for a hu is quality sound. If you look at the low end to high end alpines and compare it to the high end pioneers, kenwoods, clarions, etc., the cd signal to noise ratio is higher. This means that the hissing sound that you get is a lot lower on the alpine than the other brands, meaning a clearer sound. Personally, I look at the specs, especially clarity, and that's why I have an alpine.

2001Millrunner

I agree with all Alpine lovers. Alpine sounds better, holds up better, looks a lot classier than those toy-looking pioneer. I'd choose Alpine for if nothing else, their design.

gtm130

it depends on what you are doing with it, if you are going to run amplifiers for the speakers go with kenwood for the 5v preouts, even then if you are looking to spend 400 bucks, alpine and kenwood will have the same sound quality, pioneer will have the frills but the 200 dollar sound quality, another thing is kenwoods all come sirius ready, and sirius is the only comercial free satallite radio (its awesome might i add)

Bob_98SR5

Guys,

Sorry to hijack the current Pioneer vs Alpine debate, but like Bama, I bought a Clarion. This was strongly based on DavidA's recommendation and my follow up research on Crutchfield's website. I did not get the top of the line Clarion like Bama did, but i bought the DXZ545MP like DavidA did. It comes with everything I need which is to say, I'm not a big audiophile. I got my MP3 playing capability, 2 preouts, a nice black face that doesn't look like a shiny rocket ship (like the Sony Xplods and some Pioneers), a cd slot that does not require the face to fold down (I hate that---too many moving parts, not good), and a detachable face.



I bought mine on ebay for a grand total of $110.00 with shipping. Check out ebay. It looks like several guys are just giving this model away.

Bob