Stereo System
This is my very first aftermarket car stereo, ever


This was the first aftermarket car stereo I ever had. It's a JVC KS-RG8. It looked really cool because of its modern styling, designed by Giorgetto Guigiaro (the guy that designed the AZTEC concept car). The picture doesn't do it justice... the large buttons on either side of the display were shiny clear plastic with the icons silkscreened from the inside. The LCD bezel matched the buttons. It had a really cool look to it, which is one of the big reasons why I bought it. It was a cassette player, but it had a computerized full-logic cassette transport with motorized loading and eject. It also had a U-turn autoreverse head, so head azimuth for each side could be adjusted independently (most cassette car stereos have a fixed head, U-turn heads are normally found on more expensive home cassette decks). The entire front faceplate opened electronically with a touch of the EJECT button. It also had CD-changer controls, dual illumination, track up/down for the cassette (similar to a CD player, but much slower), and many other cool features. I got it in December 1992 and installed it in my 1986 Mercury Sable LS during that winter. When the Sable got totaled, I got my Olds in March 1994 and lived with the factory radio all spring. In June 1994 I bought my Sony XE-8MkII 1/2 DIN EQ and installed them both in my Olds. Later that year I picked up a used 6-CD Changer for it, the JVC XL-MG600. By 1996, I got tired of cassette and wanted to go to a random-access digital medium, but I wanted to be able to record mixes or record my friend's CDs. I decided to switch to MiniDisc. I picked it over CD-R because you can erase, rearrange, split, and combine tracks on MiniDisc. I can also just record a few tracks and listen to it right away, rather than having to wait till I have enough songs to fill a whole CD-R. I found a good deal on a Sony MDX-400 indash AM/FM 4-MD changer, so I sold the KS-RG8 and CD changer combo after installing the MDX-400 sometime in June 1997.