radio that looks stock but has modern features

[joelittel]

I'm interested in putting in an original looking radio that I can plug my phone into. We'd like to be able to play music from the phone through the car's speakers like we can in our honda.

Any thoughts or ideas?

[4uall]

http://www.classiccarstereos.com/ look in the build your own

GOOGLE is your friend

Here is a nice upgrade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEFyjLeEzT8

[kmoses]

Try this site: http://www.outofsightaudio.com/

[Nanonevol]

Or this:
http://serpentautosport.com/HTML/Audio.html

[cyborg7]

You can get lots of old style radios off ebay that have already been adapted with a 3.5mm jack for plugging directly in a phone or ipod. I got one and it looks pretty in-keeping:



But...

I stupidly tried to drive too many speakers (4) off it and not surprisingly killed it within about 3 months. In practice whilst these look good, they're not usually going to be up to the sound or power quality as a modern unit. And certainly not as good of a modern 4 channel amp. Plus when it did work it was never really loud enough to hear well at speed with the hood down and on ocassion there was lots of that horrible feedback you sometimes get from a mobile phone out of speakers.

I was stuck with either getting a modern head unit or getting a separate amp and putting it in the boot hidden away. I even contemplated getting a bluetooth speaker and trying to power that up some way.

In the end I got a mini amp that's actually neatly tucked behind the back seat in the curve of the metal Probably not a lot of ventilation but it's clear all round and seems to runs cool in any case. If your battery is in the boot then it's an easy task to wire it in. It even comes with an inbuilt relay so no switching - just power it up off an ignition fed wire. Seriously loud. 4 RCA's into 2 then into a mini-jack straight into the phone. The only thing is that the phone or ipod has to control the volume though - works fine for me to be honest. If I was clever then I'd be able to use the old radio to control the volume, but that's beyond me.

Clarion XC1410 Compact 4-channel amplifier — 50 watts RMS x 4

http://www.crutchfield.com/S-fjIGRofWFG ... C1410.html

[joelittel]

Thanks for the info guys. I know nothing about audio equipment and even less about setting it up properly.

This project is really for my wife's benefit. She's been asking for a radio that works since we got the car. I know her well enough to know that the volume will be up, way up, when she's on the highways so I'll need to keep that in mind when putting components together.

Maybe I'll leave the stock unit in place but have a hidden jack to plug the phone into.

[spidernut]

I Spider owner I know named Dan bought one of the new retro designed AM/FM MP3 players. It fit his car perfectly and looks era appropriate. It was really nice and sounded great.

[supplyguy]

I put one of these in and while I love how it looks, and love the hidden MP3 jack, but the sound is really inadequate. I just bought a very small amp and some better speakers that I hope will provide the oomph to hear it over the wind noise. Will update once installed.

[Nanonevol]

[quote="cyborg7"]
I stupidly tried to drive too many speakers (4) off it and not surprisingly killed it within about 3 months. In practice whilst these look good, they're not usually going to be up to the sound or power quality as a modern unit. And certainly not as good of a modern 4 channel amp. Plus when it did work it was never really loud enough to hear well at speed with the hood down and on ocassion there was lots of that horrible feedback you sometimes get from a mobile phone out of speakers.

If you ever want to try this again, wire the extra speakers in series rather than parrallel. You can run lots of speakers as long as you alternate series, then parrallel, etc. I know this from practical application, not electronics expertise but it has to do with the impedence.