patricknm

Hey gang! Thanks to all of the information here on the forums, I decided to go ahead and replace my Shaker 500 head unit with an Alpine CDA-9857. I was primarily interested in having easy access to the music on my 60 GB iPod. I am pretty happy with things as they stand. I am still using the stock speakers that came with the Shaker 500 system... more on that in a bit.

I purchased the unit through Crutchfield. The head unit was $350 and the iPod cable was an additional $30. They threw in the Ford wiring harness and the dash kit at no cost. They also provided a decent set of installation instructions.

Installation took a couple of hours and was "reasonably" simple. I had to call their tech support a couple of times for help (e.g. the way to remove the wiring attachment to the climate control did not seem immediately obvious to me at first). But their tech support line was awesome and they were able to talk me through my little hangups. Splicing together the wiring harness with the wires on the back of the head unit took a bit of time, but it was all very straightforward. (Many hanks to praztek for pointing out the need for a 5v voltage regulator between the Alpine and the sub-woofer harness!)

I am pretty darn happy with the result! Controlling the iPod from the head unit took a little getting used to, but it actually works really well. Not quite as well as using the iPod itself, but you can certainly access everything you need to. I simply hook up the iPod, leave it in the glove compartment, and use the Alpine for all controls.

I am generally happy with the sound through the stock speakers, but I have been trying hard to figure out the best center frequencies for the treble/bass controls on the Alpine to match up with these speakers. I listen to a wide variety of music and I am not really finding a good setting that works all of the time. This is a little surprising to me, because I thought that I had a good setting on my original Shaker 500 unit. Of course, I can't go back and test that to see if it was really the case or not. Does anyone else use the 9857 with their stock Shaker 500 speakers? Have you experimented with this as well? Of course, I also like to crank it up pretty loud when the top is down, and I am over-driving the bass/subs from time to time. So I probably will replace speakers down the road sometime.

Many thanks to everyone who has been discussing these issues on the Forum here.

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BlackoutStang

So you scroll through your iPod on the head unit, and it displays everything on the unit?

Man, you're really making me want to swap in a new head unit... I just have my iPod sitting in the cup holder with iTrip plugged in as it is now.

patricknm

Yeah, you can configure it to display whatever information you want (I think). Click on the third picture in my original post... it is displaying the artist and song name directly from the iPod. You can download the owner's manual for the CDA-9857 directly from Alpine if you would like to see what all it does:

http://www.alpine-usa.com/images/pro...M_CDA-9857.pdf

Scrolling through information on the head unit works pretty well, but it is not as fast as using the iPod itself. But it's still darn good. I'm really happy with its functionality. You can read other user reviews of this unit on the Crutchfield site if you want to hear more opinions about its iPod control.

Pat

BlackoutStang

Another fine example of how these forums have influenced me into spending more cash on my car.

BigNasty06

Yep... Had my 9857 installed a couple weeks ago. Now I am TRYING to resist an amp and upgrading the speakers!

CDW63

Just like "BigNasty06" I had the Alpine 9857 installed, I don't miss the CD changer from the shaker 500 at all. Soon I will be installing some different speakers to replace the factory units.