daved (12/09/82)
I'm looking for a reasonably( <= $250 ) priced FM/cassette deck to replace my last car deck( recently "borrowed" by unknown persons!). Looking at catal[logs, I find myself hopelessly confused by the number of possibilities. Any recommendations or helpful info would be greatly appreciated. The following features, or a subset thereof, would be nice: Auto Reverse and/or Auto Replay Seperate bass and volume Dolby B Preset tuning buttons Balance and Fader (if only one, balance) FM muting ... not really expecting everything, just a subset. An amp will probably be required but a >15 w/channel deck would get some serious scrutiny. Also, the price above is list, in other words, flexible because I'll probably be paying closer to wholesale. ... as they say, Thanks in Advance Please Mail, Dave Dorocke Genrad Inc. Concord, MA (...decvax!genradbolton!grkermit!daved)
tests (12/10/82)
My favorite car deck in the under $250 price range is the Clarion 5550 or 5550R. The 5550 is a standard size, the "R" model is the same thing but fits in a smaller hole in the dash. FM reception is very good. No Dolby, but an effective(!) tone control, and a 70/120 microsecond equalization switch. Autoreverse, locking fast-forward and rewind, balance, fader, and a "music search" switch which lets you fast-forward/rewind just to the next/last song. The music-search feature is something you can get hooked on very easily. Power output is 6 watts/channel, which is 50% more than most cheap decks and which fills a scirocco quite well. It goes for $180- $225.