BlackBetty

A little while ago I installed a new radio in my sister's car. It's an inexpensive Kenwood unit with USB and 3.5mm inputs. I was impressed with the sound quality and also realized how much I wanted to be able to use my iPod in the car. I was tired of burning CDs and then wanting to add one more track to them. I decided that it was time for the Shaker to go.

My dream replacement for the Shaker 500 is a McIntosh MX406, but in addition to costing over a grand, I would have to dump a bunch more money into buying amps since the McIntosh only has pre-amp outputs. So I had to find something more reasonable to use. Here were my criteria:

Auxiliary input
Factory looks
Excellent sound
Internal amplifier
AM/FM
Single disc CD
Simple, straightforward interface
No Nav or touchscreen
Relatively inexpensive

I still want to do the McIntosh someday so I didn't want to spend a ton right now. I ended up going with the Nakamichi CD400 as it was reviewed well and had everything I wanted and nothing that I didn't. I ordered it from WoofersEtc.com which was a little scary but it arrived in fine shape. I ordered the dash kit and antenna adapter from Crutchfield and the PAC harness from someone on ebay. I realize that I didn't need the PAC harness but I figured I'd rather have everything back there in case I did want to utilize some of it's other features later.

It turns out that my '06 didn't need the antenna adapter as the car has the standard "Motorola" style plug. The install went smoothly although I do want to highlight a couple things that I did that made things easier. Number one by far is using heat shrink tubing rather than electrical tape wherever possible. I just bought a small assortment and the sizes included covered me pretty well. This is how I sealed the unused wires:



When I do have to use electrical tape, I use Scotch Super 33+. It is worlds better than generic tape. It's extremely pliable and sticky. I also had this little guy handy and it made the soldering work a lot easier:



I also did the diode fix for the PAC harness (there's a thread about it in the Audio section here). Since I hate dealing with Radio Shack, I ordered a few 1N4005 diodes and was amused when they came in this envelope:



Here's the diode in place in the amp turn-on output wire from the PAC module:



And here's the finished product, with photos of both the green and amber illumination. The button illumination can also be changed independently from the display. The green matches our interiors pretty well. The amber looks really nice but it doesn't go with the rest of the illumination quite as nicely:







I also wanted a nice clean way to plug an iPod into the stereo without having cables going all over the place. I ordered a 3.5mm jack and spliced it into what was a 3.5mm-to-RCA cable:



I then mounted the jack in the parking brake access panel in the console (and came perilously close to drilling the hole in a spot where the parking brake would hit the cable):





I thought the sound from the iPod was a little muddy so I found a vendor called CableJive that sells dock connector-to-USB Charger and 3.5mm output cable. This bypasses the craptastic little amp in the iPod and gives you an actual line-out while also allowing charging from a 12V USB adapter.

In the end, I'm very happy with how the install went. I played around with the mounting of the head unit for a while and settled on using the DIN sleeve, although it was still a bit loose. The stereo came with some thin black foam strips that I used to shore things up a bit. To be completely honest, I'm not totally blown away by the sound quality. At some point I'm going to stick the Shaker back in and do a quick back-to-back test. I don't think the Nakamichi sounds worse, but I'm not sure if it sounds a whole lot better. I still need to do some tuning. I also think that replacing the front speakers might help a lot. I've got some left over Infinity Reference series speakers in the parcel shelf (known to be on the brighter side) and the sound is definitely better in the back seat...amazingly crisp and clean even with the volume cranked.

BlackBetty

Alright, so my curiosity got the better of me so I just popped the Shaker 500 back in, did some listening, and then put the Nakamichi back. First, let me say that the Shaker sounds pretty darn good for a factory system. I'm impressed. The sound is very clear.

I do give the Nakamichi a slight edge, once properly tuned (it's got a simple Bass/Mid/Treble/Sub equalizer). I've been taking a little bit of Bass and Mid out, along with a tad of sub. I bumped the treble one notch. It seems like the factory system is just a little mid-heavy, resulting in the muddy sound that I was experiencing.

The Nak is certainly more powerful; the Shaker's output at about 3/4 volume is similar to the Nak at 1/3 volume. The CD400 also is a lot punchier in the bass department, where the Shaker sort of smoothes over the individual drum beats. I think that in the quest for clarity, the Shaker gives up a lot at the extremes.

Finally, there are just small details here and there in the music that you don't notice on the Shaker. Unfortunately some of this subtle stuff is hard to hear over the MAC axlebacks.

So overall I'm satisfied but not as blown away as I had expected.