The GU came with with a Tape Deck stereo type (hahaha stereotype) of Head Unit. Kids had never seen a cassette tape before, so I thought it was fun to keep it. I have even gotten one FM transmitter BlueTooth adapter for it.
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Rear speakers never worked, to which I assumed there were only front speakers, being this a military agency car. One day, out of nothing, driver side speaker stopped working. Next day, no speaker worked. One day later, four speakers working, so it had four after all. Being this an intermittent issue, I thought it was some sort of bad contact. Took the central part of the dash apart, examined the stereo harness, nothing wrong with it. Chances turned to the stereo output having cracked welds of some sort. Took it a part and could not see anything visually burnt or cracked. On the bench, all four channels worked all the time. Took it to an electronic repair shop and asked the guy to resolder everything on the output side of things.
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And the darn thing didn't work once re-installed! Well, let's check the speakers then... Replaced one of the front doors with a brand new (but very underpowered) Pioneer speaker that I was using for bench testing and it worked. I had a pair of those, so I have replaced the other side as well. Since the harness had two connectors, one being exclusively for the rear speakers, I left that one disconnected and used the stereo only with the front speakers for a while. When installing the Pioneers on the front doors, I have replaced the Nissan speaker connector with regular spade (female side) connectors. Why Nissan bothered having a connector for the speakers is beyond me.
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I started looking for another solution with better audio quality. I didn't want to go Android Media Center path again, as I had a bad experience with that on my 105. The thing is, a SW based solution that someone other than me decides when to update and make it turn into crap (planned obsolescence - had to search that one) is shite mate... A couple of automatic updates over 6 months and the thing is slow as it can be. And being the cellphone something you kind of replace every two years or so, the slowness becomes painfully evident when you have something way faster at hand to compare. My decision was then to leave NAV, etc to be cellphone tasks and pick a stereo to be a good dedicated audio HW.
Another thing that bugger me a lot is the lack of an actual volume knob. You never had to look at a stereo while driving, since from AM radio days! Not even to tune, you would drive and turn the tuning knob left and right gently to fine tune the desired station, all without looking! Know, at the touch screen society, even with good finger aim qualities you can't change the volume say in a corrugated road, without looking at the unit. Fark it!
I also wanted it to be 2din so the square cut on the dash central piece wouldn't look awkward. Doing searches on google, I got to a page inside the Pioneer Brazil website for a model that checked all the boxes. No CD/DVD, no tape, nothing. Just a media receiver for BT and USB. Good power output, 6 pre-amp output channels if I decide to go amplified, 13 band equalizer. Looked promising. Oh, and a huge volume knob, hahaha. It also had the possibility to change the color of the display and keys to match the amber illumination of the Patrol switches, HVAC and stuff. Great! When I started to research the cost of it I realized it was a manufacture discontinued piece. The Pioneer current unit on my market with the desired features is now 1din. Ok, let's not give up, let's go for a used one. After a few months on the hunt I was able to get a good used one, no scratches, for a reasonable price.
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Bought from my favorite Choina site one Nissan to ISO adapter harness, pretty much like the Aerpro model I see here on all stereo topics. Bought locally one ISO half built harness and matched/soldered that to the Pioneer half harness that came with the unit. Some cloth tape for that OEM finish and also self adhesive foam tape around the connectors to keep them from making noise behind the dash if they bang around on corrugated roads. I am happy with how this came out.
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I don't want to spend any more money on the GU other then maintenance before I have the GQ finished, so I decided to give a pair of old (but more powerful) Pioneer speakers a try for the rear doors. I saved them from the beaten up GQ when disassembling it's interior. I bit bent, full of dust, one with a broken wire from terminals to coil. Cleaned them a bit, resoldered the broken wire.
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Hands-free mic on the (my) drivers side A-pillar and unit in place. The sound difference, even with not up to par speakers was astonishing. They say that SPECIALLY in audio you get what you paid for, and this can't be far from true. Absolutely no comparison with the listening pleasure of this unit on regular speakers and the Android unit on my 105 with GOOD speakers.
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