Alright, so I've tried talking to some people I assumed were audio experts and they had no clue, so I'll ask this to a broader range of people.

Straight to the question, then to the reason why I ask...

Is it possible to simply swap the faceplate from the headunit to another faceplate of the same "series" so to speak from the same company?

The reason I ask is that, I've been working on a new stereo system for my car. The previous owner has in a Pioneer DEH-P2000 or DEH-P20 (one of the two), and aside from the fact that it's fairly outdated, it just doesn't suit my tastes for various reasons, look, functions, color scheme, etc...

Well anyways, tonight I decided to install my subs from my other car, and so I removed the headunit and looked behind. The previous owner, instead of using adapters just cut and spliced the wires. Now, not all of the wires are extremely short, but a few barely have any slack. While it wasn't necessarily extremely professional with the lack of an adapter, the installer did go to the trouble of putting in some decent *can't think of the name for them* things which you clamp onto the wires to put them together.

Besides that, there is a huge mess of wires that just looks depressing to work with and to top it all off there is a DVD screen separate from the reciever. So not only would I have to try and hook up the reciever itself, I'd have to hook the DVD screen up to it, turn around hook subs up to it, all the while working with a limited amount of wires in a cramped area. While I'm a decent stereo installer, I'm no expert, and to be honest I don't think I can handle a job this big, nor am I too eager to hire a professional to do it.

My last argument toward swapping out a faceplate is this. There is such a big deal about removing the faceplate from the headunit at my school because someone might steal it. Now, this happens quite a bit all over the place, but obviously to some extent it is possible to use a faceplate without the head unit it belongs to because if there wasn't there would be no point in stealing the faceplate as you'd have to either steal the whole reciever or be in possession of the same make and model of stereo. So if you've forgotten the question I'll refresh you.

Can I for example go out and buy a new reciever from Pioneer, take the face plate from the box let's say it was a DEH-P9300 and just slap that faceplate onto my DEH-P2000? Thank you.

 

nope, you can't. The faceplates are model specific.

 

Some cd players have the same connectors and yes they will connect, but obviously when you go from say the DEH-P2000 to the P3000, the 3000 has more features, you will not gain those features of the 3000 when you have to connected to the 2000 chassis. Now what your saying, going from the P9300 (which I have in my Bonne) down to a P2000, no it wont work at all, I think the 9300 has 2 of the plugs on the units face as opposed to most cd players have 1. Not sure right off hand.

And your right theres no point to stealing just a face plate, but now with eBay and everything. Yes people do, you know some night you put it in your pocket and you go out and get drunk and lose it or whatever, hop on eBay and chances are you can find someone selling just a faceplate. Especially when it's the high end models, someone has a $600 head unit, and can use the thing because they lost their face plate are willing to pay a pretty penny for a faceplate, also considering getting one from the manufacturer usually cost about 60% of the entire unit new.

So no what you want to do will not work, and buy the car harness and get it so you have the connectors because every time you pull your cd player out will be that much more of a headache.

 

Alright, thank you both.

I don't mind working with stereos, but I've hit a stream of laziness right now, and besides that, when I pulled it all out, this was extremely depressing to see the wire setup behind there. I wasn't exactly sure if the manufacturers did this or not because I haven't bought several different faceplates in my lifetime, and the ones I have bought have been from different companies in different cars. I could see how it could be a good deal if it was possible, I think more people would upgrade their stereos more often if all they had to do was buy the faceplate, but of course you guys mentioned that new options involve more circuits and relays and wires and in return need more connectors. And I suppose if it did work, it would be that much more tempting to steal the faceplate for a theif. But anyways, thank you both for your responses.

 

the connections you describe are called T-taps and are a stereo no-no.......... They come disconnected easily and eventually the connection corrodes.

 

This REALLY sucks. As soon as I read this thread I grabbed the face to my Premer 780 and its cracked and worthless now. :-( This is ironic.

 

Oh man, I'm sorry to hear that. That sucks!!! Well good luck to ya paperinacup.