Aiwa ADC-FM60 CD Changer

I bought a used Camaro about two months ago, and the first thing I looked into was getting a CD player to go with it. The tape deck was busted, so I couldn't use the converter on my discman, so I went on over to Best Buy and I checked out the CD-changers that they had.

Now, I had a bit of a dilemma. If you've ever seen an '86 Camaro Berlinetta, you might understand what I'm talking about. The radio isn't part of the dash. The radio itself sits right in front of the gear-shift, and a console comes out of the radio. It sits on a little swivel with a fancy digital display, complete with the equalizer and everything. This would be wonderful if it came with a CD player. But it doesn't, and the consequence is that you can't replace the stereo with one that has a built in CD player, which is the normal way to put a CD player in a car.

My only choice was to buy a disc-changer that used the existing radio. Looking at the options and listening to the salesman, I decided that the AIWA would be the best. I'd used AIWA products before and had no problems, so I figured I had nothing to lose.

The next night I attempted to install it, and that's where the trouble began. First, you have to open the dash and reach the old radio. You have to plug the antenna into a new wire, which plugs into the old radio. This way, you can turn on the radio and hear the CDs in your changer. Unfortunately, a stripped screw forced me to spend over 45 minutes just taking off the panel above the radio.

I plugged in the antenna and shoved the little unit under the dash and out of view. That wasn't so bad. However, then I had to find a place to mount the disc-changer. My Camaro has a hatchback, so of course it doesn't have much trunk space. There was a perfect space in the main compartment on the right side of the car except... I would never be able to get my spare tire out again. Putting it in the bottom of the main compartment would essentially eliminate all of my trunk space. So I was left with the little compartment on the left - a perfect fit.

Unfortunately, the mounting brackets are, for no apparent reason, extremely large. The disc-changer fit perfectly, with a little room to spare... but the mounting brackets wouldn't fit. After a little ingenuity, my own bracket, a wooden block, and drilling a few screws into the body of the car, though, I finally got the changer installed. It took another hour or two just for that.

Of course, from there, I wasn't going to have any problems, right?

I put four CDs in, and they worked fine. I noticed a bit of a distortion in the treble (there was a faint, constant high pitch noise at some times that I didn't notice in other CD players), but I didn't have any other problems. I was warned that there might be some static because everything went through the radio, but that wasn't noticable.

The problem came when I started driving. Edison's roads are, unfortunately, not in the best condition. Aside from an excess of train tracks (most out of use), there are countless pot holes. The ride in my car is a bit rough, just as it was designed. But this doesn't make the disc-changer happy. Nearly every time I hit a pot hole or go over a speed bump a little too fast, the CD skips. Sometimes it'll skip just driving over train tracks. Luckily, it hasn't ruined any of the CDs, but is definitely _very_ noticable.

The other major problem is that, well, the disc changer breaks a lot. I've had it for about a month and a half. First, it just stopped working... I had no idea what was wrong with it. After fiddling a little, unplugging it several times and plugging it back in, it started working again. Go figure.

Then, a little over a week ago (about a month after I bought the changer), a funky "E - 03" error appeared on the console. I had no idea what this meant, but the manual says that it means the CD is not properly loaded. I ejected the CDs several times, re-loaded them, tried again, all to no avail. Then, mysteriously, after I dropped my friend off, three of the four CDs started working just fine.

This morning, I decided I would try to fix the fourth CD. That was a bad idea. Now, after putting two new CDs in the disc changer, I get the same error from every CD. I've tried just about everything short of calling Best Buy and having them look at it.

Aside from all the problems, it is a nice changer. 6-CDs is plenty, and it's a small enough unit to fit in the car (if the mounting brackets weren't so big). The console is very convenient, because you can put it where-ever you feel most comfortable using it. I just wish the confounded thing would work.

** Update **

I just read over this review, and I thought that it might be important to some of you to know what happened in the following months...

The E-03 error never really went away. I fiddled for days and could not get it to work. My dad and I eventually took it apart and tried to clean off the lens. As I recall, this temporarily fixed the problem, but after another two-three weeks it broke again.

I eventually caved in and took the radio to be serviced. There was a shop nearby, so I dropped it off and picked it up several days later. The result was the same as when I cleaned the lense. The CD player worked for a couple weeks, and then it went kapoot.

I also received an e-mail from someone a while ago that had the same problem. He couldn't find a way to fix the CD player either, aside from periodically cleaning the lense.

Obviously, this was not the result of one faulty piece of merchandise. It's just plain shoddy workmanship. I've lowered my rating to 1 Star and I heartily discourage anyone from buying it.