JVC Head Units

lonwa

What is the general agreement on the quality of JVC HU's?

Are they as good as pioneer/alpine, not as good, realy not good, bad...?

I have no experience with them so I wanted to see what you guys think.


Thanks

Lonwa

audiobliss

I personally have no experience with them, either, but my general feeling about them is that they're not up to par. I don't think they're as bad as Sony, but as long as you can find something you like from Eclipse, Alpine, Pioneer, or Kenwood, I wouldn't bother looking at them.

MacLeod

JVC are just as good as Alpine, Kenwood, Pioneer or any other.

Actually, the head unit Im looking at right now for an upgrade is a JVC.

audiobliss

MacLeod wrote:

Actually, the head unit Im looking at right now for an upgrade is a JVC.

:eek:

*shakes head*

a disgrace...

MacLeod

Well, right now JVC and Eclipse are the only brands with SQ tuning features instead of Ipod and DVD features at their given price point!

I double dog dare ya to find time alignment on any other brand head unit for under $500!

neomagus00

assuming it's real TA and not the crappy TA that pioneer has...

audiobliss

MacLeod wrote:

Well, right now JVC and Eclipse are the only brands with SQ tuning features instead of Ipod and DVD features at their given price point!

I double dog dare ya to find time alignment on any other brand head unit for under $500!

Pioneer Premier DEH-P860MP.

1996blackmax

That's what Neo has.

audiobliss

As well as do I.

lonwa

Does Pioneer make a head unit which can play MP3/WMA files from a burned DVD-R disc?

The only ones I can find are the JVC KD-DV4200 and KD-DV5100, or Alpine DVA-9860 and 9861.

neomagus00

they'd advertise the crap out of a capability like that, so if you don't see it on the website, they probably don't have it...

swerve

Every JVC I sell at ccity comes back w/ problems.

CD's usually stop ejecting.

1996blackmax

The last JVC I had was from the early 90's. It has the 2 knobs on the sides. In fact I still have it in the garage. I powered it up a few years ago and it still worked . Guess they don't make them like that any more.

Rogue Torino

to solve CD not ejecting reset the unit by holding down power, select and then pressing eject until the unit shut's off resets and ejects the CD. Very minor problem. Most of the JVC's are fairly easy to use too.

Further more Kenwood's I find to be irritating. how long have they had flip face technolgy and they still can't make good ribbon cables that don't get cracked and one by one disable buttons and the display. Actually it's a good thing it's made me some money from repairing them....

New Alpine (since last year)...sorry to say this, sucks. They have made the thing less powerful, and with more gimmicks that I'll never use and less things that I actually do use. And that new menu system is a pain in the **** ****. The CDA 9815 I own is a hell of a lot better than the newer units they have out and alot easier to use.

Pioneer is good but that stupid knob has got to go. WTF is wrong with using buttons? They look kinda stupid IMO too. Time alignment isn't the best from what I hear either, but I haven't really fooled with that.

Sony.... I don't even want to go into that one.

Jensens are great.....boomerangs. The store sells you it and about a week later it'll be right back in the store, broken. Stupid Audiovox making large quanities of crap out of what used to be at least secent crap that wouldn't break down. (remember when Code Alarm used to be good?? Garbage now stay away!)

Clarion. I haven't really looked up on and haven't really played with much, but trying to figure out the interface without a manual could prove to be a real pain.

Eclipse. The few I have used have been good and I can't wait till CC get's their lineup in so I can have fun again, like I first did when I got this job.

1996blackmax

Cool to know the solution. Not cool that it sounds like a common thing though.

PoweredByDodge

i remember when code alarm used to be good - lolol ! about 9 years ago ... respectable entry level alarms.

far as JVC goes - they're the only company i know of that has a 3" LCD monitor built into the faceplate -- its plays the DVD you insert in the CD/DVD deck... its like a 400 dollar deck, but considering you dont have to buy a monitor and its sooooo little, i dig it. all in one, kinda cool.

Red230SX

I just recently (like four weeks ago) threw away my JVC Digifine "Cartridge" CD Player
that I bought like way back in the 90's. And guess what.... It still worked flawlessly!

I just figured why bother keeping it.. But it was a GREAT head, the rotary volume
control was a nice feature (I am not a big button guy, not on my HU's at least for the
volume control).

I never had complaints with JVC I thought they always built a solid CD player but I
have no idea how they rate in today's world..

cam5860

Jvc's cd player are not that great. They have always been lacking in features. They are plain as ****. They used to skip like hell. Bottom line is if your building a sq system jvc is not even a choice when it comes to headunits.

audiobliss

Red230SX wrote:

I just recently (like four weeks ago) threw away my JVC Digifine "Cartridge" CD Player
that I bought like way back in the 90's. And guess what.... It still worked flawlessly!

I'd say that's because it was from the early 90's. I can't believe how build quality has so drastically dropped since even then.

MacLeod

Rogue Torino wrote:

to solve CD not ejecting reset the unit by holding down power, select and then pressing eject until the unit shut's off resets and ejects the CD. Very minor problem. Most of the JVC's are fairly easy to use too.

Further more Kenwood's I find to be irritating. how long have they had flip face technolgy and they still can't make good ribbon cables that don't get cracked and one by one disable buttons and the display. Actually it's a good thing it's made me some money from repairing them....

New Alpine (since last year)...sorry to say this, sucks. They have made the thing less powerful, and with more gimmicks that I'll never use and less things that I actually do use. And that new menu system is a pain in the **** ****. The CDA 9815 I own is a hell of a lot better than the newer units they have out and alot easier to use.

Pioneer is good but that stupid knob has got to go. WTF is wrong with using buttons? They look kinda stupid IMO too. Time alignment isn't the best from what I hear either, but I haven't really fooled with that.

Sony.... I don't even want to go into that one.

Jensens are great.....boomerangs. The store sells you it and about a week later it'll be right back in the store, broken. Stupid Audiovox making large quanities of crap out of what used to be at least secent crap that wouldn't break down. (remember when Code Alarm used to be good?? Garbage now stay away!)

Clarion. I haven't really looked up on and haven't really played with much, but trying to figure out the interface without a manual could prove to be a real pain.

Eclipse. The few I have used have been good and I can't wait till CC get's their lineup in so I can have fun again, like I first did when I got this job.

Bingo! Hit the nail right on the head!

Alpine is the biggest disappoinment. Im a huge Alpine fan and to see them coming out with crap that Ill never use much less WANT to use, dumping the stuff I do want to use and making things less powerful just sucks.

Also with ya on the Pioneer. I dont understand why head unit makers seem to be trying to figure out how to use the least amount of buttons as possible. Forget the stupid knob that controls 500 different things and just give me a good solid button that I wont miss when driving down the road.

And as far as the Pioneer P860, its TA is "auto" TA which is basically worthless.

B3Nut

Around 1998 I bought a JVC head, forgot the model, with a flip-down face. I bought it in desperation having had terrible luck getting an Eclipse 5341 (I think that was the model) that would work. I went through two units, the second would almost never play a CD at all. The shop would send it back, and it would come back still not usable. The shop blamed the skipping on the slight angle it sat at in my '90 Thunderbird's dash. BS, sez I. One night I was at Sears getting tires or something, saw the JVC, and bought it along with a fresh harness adapter. Installed in place of the Eclipse myself, and tossed the Eclipse into the garbage can in disgust.

The JVC? Oh, it was flawless. Rarely ever skipped, sounded beautiful, never gave me a minute's trouble. Had a BBE processor, aux input on the front, and a remote (which I found amusing, then eneded up finding useful). Eclipse left a *really* bad taste in my mouth. Bummer that, as when the 5341 worked it was glorious-sounding, and the user interface was nicely uncluttered. But that JVC was a pleasant surprise...I wish I would have kept it after disposing of the Thunderchicken. No clue if the current ones are any good...every head unit I look at now turns me off...too much glitzy crap. Where's the seriousness of the early Alpine heads or the venerable old Sony CDX-R77 I had years ago? Today's heads remind me of a slot machine in Vegas....eeesh.

Todd in Beerbratistan

audiobliss

MacLeod wrote:

And as far as the Pioneer P860, its TA is "auto" TA which is basically worthless.

You sure? I was pretty sure you could manually adjust it.

MacLeod

JVC and Panasonic are both very good head units that dont get a lot of attention.

I remember Panasonics first big CD player was the one back in about 1996 that was "skipless". It had something like 10 second memory and was impossible to make it skip. It also had very good build quality and I knew several people that ran them that swore by them.

Likewise, Ive run upon more than a few people in the competition lanes that run JVC and love em.

1996blackmax

audiobliss wrote:

You sure? I was pretty sure you could manually adjust it.

You can, but the soundstage gets very tiny. On another thread I said that it was like having tunnel vision, but with your ears. I tried tweaking my 8600 (same as the 860, but non-Premier), but it did not work. I have never had that issue with the T.A. feature with all of my Alpine HUs, processors, or Eclipse HUs. With these other units you were just basically moving the singer's voice towards the center, but the stage was nice and wide. With the Pioneer HU this did not happen, things just sounded small.

neomagus00

the pioneer TA very audibly adds eq and left-right balancing on top of just TA, and i think it boosts the common information in each channel, even when you manually adjust the distances, and i think that all that together is what compresses the stage...

1996blackmax

Sad thing because those HU's (DEH-P860MP/DEH-P8600MP) are actually nice units .

At least it pushed me to go back to Eclipse. Like I said before, I have not been this happy with a HU overall in a very long time .

MacLeod

The thing I dont like about Eclipse is that they have quit sponsoring the competition scene. They were a big supporter of USACi and have since pulled their sponsorship. :mad:

1996blackmax

That is does not change the fact that they make top notch HU's .

MacLeod

True but if Eclipse chooses not to support the competiton sactioning bodies, then I will choose to support the brands that do.