Well, I finally got around to installing my empeg. It is currently mounted in my 1962 Lincoln Continental.

I spent a fair amount of money on quality interconnects, so it was kind of a letdown to have to use those crappy, thin, plastic grounding connectors that are included with the unit. A pro installer I showed the unit to also commented on the low-quality RCA connectors on the unit, since the unit itself was so well built and expensive. Anyway, I hooked it up with the adaptor grounded to the empeg rather than the amp as I didn't want to show those ugly things, and it didn't seem to make a difference in sound when hooked up there. Why the decision was to go with floating ground will forever escape me...

I have a lot of serious noise problems it turns out, even when the engine is off. I believe the noise is after the amps as it doesn't seem to get louder with a higher volume, but it's very annoying. I do not blame the empeg for this, as it had no noise problems on my house system.

The install was very easy. No complaints there.

Most of my problems have to do with the terrible user interface. It is basically impossible to drive and do anything other than change the volume, as you have to keep looking at the unit every time, plus all the submenus require your attention. I never realized how good head units were, with all the buttons on the front for one-touch access, until I tried to use the empeg.

Another problem is, I kept losing the damn remote! I'd put it on the seat and it would slide off somewhere out of reach. I kept having to spend time looking for it, as using the buttons is next to impossible due to their being only four and really limited in functionality.

I am happy with the performance of the unit - the playback is fine even with all my noise and it performed flawlessly in that regard - but the UI and functionality leaves a lot to be desired. No way to skip playlists, the random function only worked when you re-selected a playlist after turning it on or off, and the bahaviour is quite different from what I'm used to in a head unit.

Also, why is the serial connector different on the carriage from the one on the back of the unit? Was someone asleep when that strange decision was made? As it stands, I need to pull the unit out to use the serial port, when I should be able to plug the included serial cable into the carriage connector just like the built-in one. Boggle...

So, in short, hardware: good (but strange), software: needs work.

It's a hoot, though!