E30 Zone

As per thread title.

As much as I love the OE Blaupunk, it is starting to annoy a little with the cassette adaptor and am tempted to upgrade. However want one that will not look out of place on the E30 and have USB input (v useful). Does such a head unit exist?

last time i was there, halfords had a Sony head unit on offer for about £80 or £90 that totally fits the bill. front mounted USB socket though so could cause knuckle pain if you don't have a quickshift fitted (perfect excuse for one ). it's satin black and has red/ornage illumination and would look spot on in a E30. it's MP3 CD compatible too
unfotunately i want one with amp pre-outs which this doesn't have a rear mounted USB socket would also be nice so i can have a USB extension lead and keep the USB stick in the glove box.
do a search, i asked this exact same question about a month ago and had a few suggestions

Thanks for the heads up. Will do a search

Is this the one you are talking about?

that looks like it
not bad for the money ey?

I actually have one similar in the E36 with the 'full face'.


Quite decent and seemed to suit the E36 dash too.

It just feels 'wrong' to put something like that in the E30...

The Blaupunkt is just so 'OE styleeee'

the cheaper one pictured above has no chrome though so would look a lot better imo

gareth wrote:the cheaper one pictured above has no chrome though so would look a lot better imo

You are right, I do think it would actually suit the E30 dash well.

Just physically find it hard to convince myself to break the 'OE goodness'!

Incidentally, what kind of wiring am I likely to find behind this current stereo? I doubt it'll be a standard ISO block?

no it's a special BMW connector.
you can buy a adaptor loom though which saves getting the snips out.
mine has been butchered horribly before i bought it so i fitted a ISO connector to the loom

Thanks for the info.

I am tempted.

This might be worth a look also...

With a bit of knowledge in electronics you could wire in a standard jack cable by cutting off one end and soldering it to a point inside the oe headunit. Then you'd plug in your mp3 player.

For this to work the you'd have to find out what power was being sent from the cassette to the head units built in amp then solder in some resistors or what ever into the jack cable

that would be pretty good!

get almost any old kenwood cassette player then use the i500 i think it is replaces the cd changer and gives you a proper ipod connection you just dont get all the file info that you would with a more modern head unit
thats if you want to use an ipod

schnaarf wrote:With a bit of knowledge in electronics you could wire in a standard jack cable by cutting off one end and soldering it to a point inside the oe headunit. Then you'd plug in your mp3 player.

For this to work the you'd have to find out what power was being sent from the cassette to the head units built in amp then solder in some resistors or what ever into the jack cable

that would be pretty good!

Like this ?

http://donn.dyndns.org/projects/carstereoinput/

exactly. I would wire it into the CD player wiring then put on a blank silent track and have the music playing over the top instead of the radio being in the background!

schnaarf wrote:With a bit of knowledge in electronics you could wire in a standard jack cable by cutting off one end and soldering it to a point inside the oe headunit. Then you'd plug in your mp3 player.

For this to work the you'd have to find out what power was being sent from the cassette to the head units built in amp then solder in some resistors or what ever into the jack cable

that would be pretty good!

I'm thinking direct feed (via wire in the glove box) through the AUX input socket.

Do any of the old skool head units have this input? The Blaupunkt doesn't.

Obviously if your headunit had an aux input then you'd use that but I think that most won't

unless they have a cd changer input as I'm sure there is somewhere to get a cable to change the specific cd changer plug to a mini jack or phono

schnaarf wrote:Obviously if your headunit had an aux input then you'd use that but I think that most won't

unless they have a cd changer input as I'm sure there is somewhere to get a cable to change the specific cd changer plug to a mini jack or phono

If I could find an old skool one that did, t'would be perfect.

http://www.pioneer.nl/uk/products/archi ... index.html

Got this in my Touring, love it !

Pierre

I have an earlier version of this
p://jvcmobile.co.uk/product.php?pr=171

and I match the colour to the dash and like the USB