Re: '89 200 Stereo Upgrade

[dieckeaw@plu.edu]

On Wed, 21 Feb 1996 TMein@aol.com wrote:

> During my months of psuedo employment spent while following my girlfriend
> (now fiancee) around the state, I spent a few weeks at Circuit City in the
> Car Stereo dept. To clarify, Circuit City is NOT the place for top notch
> audio gear, but they do have respectable mid-range stuff. One such unit was a
> Panasonic in dash cd player, model CQ-DP628EU. 

Be very careful when buying anything from chain mass-fi stores like 
Circut City, Incredilbe Universe, Future Shop, Good Guys, et al.  
Manufactures who supply these shops with their gear generally make 2 
lines of their stuff:  one line for the mass-fi chains, and one (their 
"real" line) for the specialty shops.  Take Cannon computers for 
instance.  The chain store version has a fixed disk casche size thats not 
upgradeable (smaller than the "regular" version), an integrated 
sound/fax/modem board, which means when you want to upgrade one thing, 
you have to trash the other two, and generally cheeper parts (CDRom, hard 
drive, ram, etc).  The bottom line is for the same price you get a 
slower, crappier, less flexible computer. 

Same goes for audio.  A head unit with preamp outputs may not have them 
in the Future Shop version.  Plus the mass-fi model may have cheeper 
parts inside.  On the surface, they look inentical, including price, but 
in reality they may be two different animals.

Good luck in your search,

-Adam