olds97_lss

Unless pioneer has stepped up their game in the past year or so, I'd strongly advise against it. I have an old (6+ years) pioneer head unit in my wifes car (used to be my car) and it was great, even with stock speakers. I'm pretty sure its the DEH-P450MP. Plenty loud, clear and played MP3 discs. 7 years ago, that was a feature! Well, got a new car 3 years ago and thought I'd try something new. I had a JVC 15 years ago in college that was great, had a nice feature that would store EQ settings with each stored channel. Anyway, while JVC still has ok looking stuff, the quality suffered greatly. I tried to live with it for a year or so, but without an amp, it couldn't hack it. Run the volume at 75% and the speakers would pop uncontrollably, especially if you wanted any bass to come out of them. It would have been similar in spec to the JVC Arsenal KD-A315, but was $180 then. By the way, the one feature I really wanted no longer exists, the storing of the EQ with each radio preset. Anywho, I decided to try a pioneer head unit, since my other one sounded so good and did what I wanted. Started with a $120 one, sucked, then a $150 one, sucked equally but had more features, then tried a $200 one... also sucked. They were all the DEH line I believe (like the one I already had and liked). The sound was horrible no matter how I adjusted it. I even bought new 6x9's for the front and rear (06 grand marquis), still horrible. All of them sounded exactly the same. I was hoping that as the price went up, so did the amp quality and sound processing quality. It didn't. So I gave up and threw the JVC back in while I decided what to do next. At least it sounded good at a lower volume. I ended up with a kenwood that has a rear USB that I just impulse bought online. I had listened to a few in stores, but really none of the stores had any I wanted wired in for sound, just for display. I wired it up, turned it on and it was a night and day difference. Great sound, clear, loud and very tight. The only thing it lacks is bass at anything less than 50% volume. I ran it pretty hard for about a 2 years, then the power went out (last year). Just driving along with the volume cranked listening to some metallica and "POOF", dead. Pulled the head unit and wiggled the plug on the back with all the wires and the power would flicker. So, I hooked it up to a power supply in my house with alligator clips on the posts inside the plug on the back of the unit that traced to the power wires and it powered up fine. Turns out that apparently they used too weak of a bullet connector in the wire harness, or they didn't intend on some idiot running the thing at 90% volume for extended periods like me. I tore the radio apart, desoldered the power posts from the board (no small feat without a good iron, silver solder doesn't like to melt), wired in a heavy gauge RCwire set (radio control vehicles, one of my hobbies) and used a high current/low resistance RC plug on a pigtail to bypass the main plug. Has worked just fine every since. It has quite a few features, the rear USB being my favorite. It has 6 outputs for an amp and a special plug for a kenwood amp or HD radio receiver (or both, I think). Plenty of adjustments for the EQ, crossover bypass built in, amp preout volume control... pretty much a done deal if I ever do get an amp. The USB being on a 3 foot wire on the back is great. Lets me put an 8G flash drive in my glovebox out of harms way or prying eyes.