I just yanked a CD head off of a 91 Legacy wagon (I'm told that it was playing in the old car, but I did not have a CD with me to be sure) and the unit plugs directly into my tape player (Panasonic 80W, Subaru Factory unit), but has a blue wire seperate from the DIN plug. In the old installation, the display was bright but on the new instal (in my car) the display is dim, if I attach the blue wire to a hot source, if not I get no power at all), and the unit does not seem to be getting enough power to actually play a CD (will load, and eject fine, and *tries* to play, but cannot quite do so).

 

THe CD player is a Clarion, and the tape deck is a Panasonic (both cars have the same head). . .

Any ideas? I tried jumping it directly from the battery with no better results.. . . .

and use them together.

I did. THat was the way in installed it in the first place. I'm still using the "new" tape head, as all the lights work on it while my old one has a couple burnt out. . .

Also the new head has the "Aux" port, while the old one does not. . .

 

I even connected the player directly to the battery, and it was no better. . .

I may have to go back to the place I yanked this and see what was attached to the blue wire. . .

Happy Gnu Year!!!

AAAAAAAAAAARRRRUUUUUUUGGH!!!!

 

I hate it when things fix themselves (or were not really broken) with no good explanation as to why it works now. . . .

 

I got froggy, and dropped the CD player back in and reconnected it to power like I had it before, and I popped in a CD. . .Played perfectly (except for a bit of static at first). Tried annother, and it worked too. . .

Tried a half a dozen and they all worked, except for three: the two I had been using as test CDs, and one other by the same artist as one that I had been using. . .

 

It seems that the CD player does not like the encoding of those CDs. Now the real test is to rip the contents of the CDs and burn copies from my computer (a computer burnt CD works fine, when three legitimate record label CDs will not. . . . Grrrrrrrrrrrrr)

Update: I copied the CDs that would not play in thier original form to my computer and burned cpoies of them. The copies play, but the originals do not. . .

 

I guess the CD player just did not like the encoding on the originals. . .

(grumblemumble. . . .)

 

Oh, and the display being dim? that was the backlight going out on the display. . . I'll fix that later. . .for now I'm happy I can play CDs. . .

 

(Anyone got a round tuit I can borrow?)