Harold57

Be sure to check out the customers' reviews on Amazon. There's a number of folks who had problems within the first year after installing the PAC iSIMPLE IS77. I'm not saying it is a bad product but it is worth checking out the reviews first so you know what you could be getting into. That being said, there were a lot of good reviews also.

ShawnOk

iTrader: (1)

After a great deal of hope and anticipation, I tried the original poster's suggestion with the unit. It did not work in my 2002 SC430, even with the old style 7+5 connector. I talked with the company quite a bit before trying it and they were very friendly and are offering me a full refund. I guess I will have to stick with the IS77 iSimple which is still working strong. You might ask why I tried to upgrade. Well, I was hoping this new unit would work and allow me to control my iPod from the steering wheel or head unit controls. No luck on this adventure. Oh well. Just a heads up to anyone that follows suit.

akdash1

It's possible to splice in a line input fairly easily by accessing the wiring near the harness under the head unit. The head unit doesn't need to be removed and it takes about a minute to remove the center console. Most importantly, their is no noticable* signal quality loss. Oh yeah, and the head unit volume and equalizer still work.

Left Front + Red Line level output
Left Front - Green Line level output
Right Front + Black Line level output
Right Front - White Line level output


I'll elaborate on the process another time, but basically, you want to cut these wires and attach each end to seperate RCA cables. One cable will be attached to the side leaving the headunit (input) and one will be going to the amp (output). Attach the cables to either an equalizer or a line driver (white/red cable for 12v power, gray for remote), or anything that will allow you to have two inputs. Adding a 7 band equalizer (or 4, or 5, if your not as familiar with sound) can do wonders for this system if you know how to use it. Plus they only cost about $60. If you don't mind not having the cd player/radio, you can skip having a secondary unit and just connect your auxilary cable straight to your ipod or whatever. If you have noise or a weak signal, you will need something that converts the signal to balanced differential. I forgot what they're called but they don't cost much.

It's also possible to do this from the amp, which is what I did. I ran the cables under the back seat and it's completely hidden, the input cable just comes up by the side of passenger seat.


*** because the signal is no longer balanced, you will technically lose volume and there will be a unnoticable amount of signal degradation due to unbalanced signals having less headroom. Balanced signals only use the positive channel in the cable, where as unbalanced sends an inverse of the signal through the negative channel. The purpose is to cancel out interference, but it also means the signal will be twice as strong.

http://www.sonicelectronix.com/item_...te-RF-BLD.html