Hello, just thought I would say I received my tuner kit today and assembled it and it works great. There are a couple stations that sound a little "overdriven" but I think that may be just bad reception I dont think the signal meter is very acurate because it shows a full signal when I know it is not. The AM tuner is very good too I was testing it next to my pc monitor and there was no noise at all. The only thing I can say about the kit is WOW... everything is labeled so well, and the manual is so thorough Patrick really did an excellent job For those of you that havent seen the labeled components

And here is the complete tuner out of the box.

Nice one! I didn't have the components stuck to a sheet on mine. They just had little labels attached to them, mind you, that was nearly a year ago now....

Hey! That's my stuff! (same soldering station, same magnifier, ..)

-ml

I think everyone has that magnifier the radio shack special!

Actually that magnifier didn't come from radio shack, the radio shack one now has a plastic lens. I got that one from a flea market for $5.00 as for the soldering station I love it, I had the older model weller but the temp sensor in it would always go bad and then they just discontinued the whole thing, and this one was the new model. Oh and the problem I had with certain radio stations was due to bad reception, when I put the tuner in the car it worked perfect. How long have you had your soldering station Mark?

The magnifier I have is the heavy one, with glass -- got it at a local electronics supplier (not TandyCorp). I've had the soldering station for a couple of years now; got by for decades with more primitive gear, but since getting that station I've done TONS of stuff that I would never have bothered with before!

Definitely should have gotten one at University, rather than two decades later.

Cheers!

What number were you on the list ???

I was number 105 and I know the person that has 116 and he got an email that his is ready too.

Cool. I am very close then. I am #123

just saw this on ebay...
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3070304232&category=52479

Wow, well at least we know how much they will sell for
I think I will keep mine though.

Gack! Obviously I'm not charging enough

pca

man, that guy is trying to get rich off of his empeg equipment!
check out this one too..

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14262&item=2453962939

Hey, isn't that one pic Tony's empeg in his car?!

Yeah, but have a look at how many bids he's got for his empeg
Adding empeg+turner he's asking for 1055€ (=$1331). Is that not a bit greedy?

Well, it shows how empegs are valued. People who know what they are will pay what they feel is right to get hold of one.

And apparently no one feels that that empeg price is right. Come on down!

LOL

Hey, isn't that one pic Tony's empeg in his car?!

It is. It was lifted from the Riocar.org installations gallery.

Advice please: Do I just shine it on, or do I get in his face about it?

I'd just shine on and take it as a complement of my photography. The most I'd do is try to get him to update the auction with something like. "Photo courtesy of Tony Fabris."

You guys know he's a member of this board don't you?

Stu

Then he should know enough to ask permission to use the images.

(The auction contains two images from the install gallery, and a few others from empeg.com itself.)

I agree, I just thought it was worth mentioning that he's here. You should give him a little nudge.

Stu

From the above auction...

The device also offers voice recognition, which allows hands-free access to common functions including music selection.

It does?! Wow... can I have one? </sarcasm>

Stretching the bounds of artistic license a little...

The empeg was going to have voice recognition but that feature kind of got shelved after testing. Apparently they'd get quite good results in a reasonable quiet office but it'd be terrible once in the car with all of the noise.

But yeah, a bit of an exageration there

I assume it's NT2000?

It is.

Stu

So is this the tuner he bought for $250 in november i wonder? All he seems to do on this forum is buy and sell empeg stuff.

Hmmm, could be. His current tuner auction says it ws assembled by Eutronix, and I know we didn't send any to Italy, so he must have gotten it from someone else, perhaps from the transaction you speak of.

Stu

So is this the tuner he bought for $250 in november i wonder?

He bought that one from me. I thought it was odd he was selling this within a month after buying a PCATS tuner from me.

Hi Patrick,

Just two quick questions directly, since I can't seem to get to pcats.co.uk - is the tuner compatible with the Mark I, and does it do AM as well as FM? I'm getting a new car and my partner wants AM radio for her favourite news and current affairs radio; I can talk her out of having a CD player in the car, but giving up radio is impossible.

Thanks in advance,

Paul

Patrick's tuner is AM/FM but it cannot connect to the Mark 1. It is for the Mark 2/2a only.

Blast.

That means I'll have to have a second head unit in the car. Grrrrrrrrr. I must not fly into an insane rage I must not fly into an insane rage I must not fly into an insane rage I must not fly to in an insane rage ...

Paul

...or upgrade to a Mark2...

<ducks for cover>

Got my email from Patrick today!!
My tuner is ready!!

I was #123 for those who are wondering.

Sweet, want me to build it for you?

How much?

Well, I could do it for $50.00 plus shipping if you are interested.

Anyone know how much bigger in size Patrick's tuner is from the original Rio stock tuner?

b

Width and depth is about the same, but the box is taller - not sure quite how much...
My pca tuner is since about 2 weeks living in the dash of my new Peugeot - I was pleasantly surpised by the amount of space below and to the sides of the DIN slot, so I decided to use the kit tuner and put the original tuner in storage.
The kit tuner would not easily have fit in my Polo...

Anyway, the original tuner is ~33-34 mm tall (roughly 1 5/16") and I believe (from a highly defective memory) that the kit tuner is somewhere between 60 and 70 mm tall

You could of course with a bit of modification put it into a flatter but longer box if you place the circuit boards side by side, instead of stacked on top of each other.

/Michael

thanks Michael,
I currently have a kenwood tuner/cd player along with my Empeg. i was considering getting a pcats tuner and ditching my kenwood . but the pcats tuner looks huge, and not sure if it will fit. i dont have a lotta room in my montero behind the dash.

b

Hey, I'm reading this thread just now!! Yes, it's NT2000. I know he had more than one tuner, at least one of which was an original one.

He lent me a PCATS Tuner for testing, and it's the one I had problems with, and that I discussed about in a thread in the Generic Forum.

Also, I don't know if that's the tuner he is actually selling, but I shipped that tuner back to him this morning, since I don't have the time to investigate why I am having the problems mentioned above. (I'd rather find an original empeg tuner or have my old one fixed. My installer says rust can be removed and tuner cleaned. We just need some time to do so).

#121 arrived in good shape, and is 90% completed.

I must give props to pca. The kit and instructions are very well thought out. It took two sessions after work to complete it. (my eyes were going cross-eyed after a day at work). About 3 hrs total.
The only downside is I misplaced one of the VN02N transistors. Must have been when I was showing the kit to friends/coworkers. I'll be ordering a replacement from mouser.com on monday. :-\

Speaking of buying replacement parts, anyone know what I should replace one of the 10pF ceramic capacitors with? (C10,C11,C13,C14) Looking at mouser.com, I see 581-SA102A100J, and 581-SA102A100KAA, but would these be correct (and which one?) replacements? Thanks in advance..