Thread: Sony Headunits Fail

I've owned a bunch of Sony headunits, in the last week I've bought two brand new ones, both are supposed to be top of the line from their CDX lineup

First one I got is CDX-GT700HD, wiring was normal, hated the options interface and button layout. So I got next one down, CDX-GT660UP, buttons and options as good as their older models, but they decided to remove the power antenna wire out of the wiring harness. I tried the wiring harness from the GT700, and antenna would always raise up, even on CD's.

Looked up the version right before this one, GT65xx, had a blue wire (power antenna). Seriously what the crap. If this head unit was going in the Sentra I wouldn't care but P11's were blessed with power antenna's

Sony car audio line has always been junk. Even the top of the line mobile es stuff is junk. I used to work for a sony dealer and can tell you they have a high failure rate. Their other electronics seem to be okay its just the car audio that seems to be poorly built.

Pioneer FTW.

Your first mistake was to buy a Sony

I would use a JVC before I'd use a Sony product.

I'm going to go back to Kenwood since my beloved Eclipse is no longer manufactured The UI is great, and the navigation headunits are enhanced Garmin backends. Lifetime maps and traffic? Yes please.

I just took out a Sony headunit that I've had in my first car since 2004. It has aux support, just no USB, and wifeys wanted USB support in her car. This head unit chugged through bunch of usage and a bunch of years powering 2-ohm stock Bose speakers. I'm selling it to a coworker for cheap because he wanted a cheap way to get aux in without tapes.

Then bought another Sony from BestBuy via friend's employee discount. This HU also chugged through two years of 2-ohm Bose speakers, then I removed it to install the Alpine. Did the whole inline AMP, got a 16gb USB flash driver and have been running that for about 6 months. The USB navigation always annoyed me though, Alpine organizes music in banks, 1k songs per bank. Well when you have 1,300 songs, you get stuck with a bank that will have same music on shuffler over and over.

I decided to try the Sony and try USB on it. It does MSC browsing & shuffle = WIN. After tweaking the EQ I was able to get much better sound and low volumes then the Alpine and Amp (in my opinion). Only problem is max 128 folders . Thus I'm back under Sony's wrath.

Reliability has been top notch for me, price has been very low for the stuff you get. This is why I didn't mind getting two more, one for my P11 one for B15. But it looks like with newer HU's they started doing funky stuff

/Book

Hell i would use a cheap Chinese ebay knock off before sony...HELL I DID and its still working after a year, only has one word spelled wrong but the thing works great in the se-r, and now in the se-l. Its a single din dvd player with touch screen, usb, sd card and cd player, and backup camera with even digital tv tuner and i got it for 100 bucks only. Its called XD or something i always feel like its laughing at me when the big XD pops up on the screen as it starts up.

I guess I'm the only one that has had good luck, knocking on wood, with Sony Headunits. Guess will see how the new ones hold up.

I miss eclipse units and how they used to be top of the line. Or used to exist.

Yea when I used to be into car audio I rememeber my installer telling me never to buy sony car audio products as they were junk. For me, Kenwood has held up the best for in-dash radio's, Alpine amps and Diamond subs. I still have my old system from 2002 in my car.

have a brand new jvc head unit in the se-r for all the new features. Its nice but does not sound as good as my alpine that I took out. eclipse was a wonderful product. They went down hill when they started using panasonic to manufacture their low level stuff. Sony cd players are known junk. I had a brand new es head unit that lasted 2 days before it crapped out. Its a good thing I worked at a car stereo shop and it was a demo unit. I can tell you they made a whole line of cd players that were known as 50-skip-d in the industry because of the poor optics used.