It turns out that the Alpine head unit was a supreme piece of garbage. So bad infact, that I decided to go through the pain of taking this install apart to replace the head unit. The Alpine CDA-9885 was replaced with a Kenwood KDC-MP538U as pictured. I settled on the Kenwood because some online retailers claimed the illumination was switchable from blue to red. This is not the case. Some modification is in order.

Aside from the illumination not being switchable, it's simply too bright. On the whole, this is a much better head unit than the Alpine which frequently locked-up. The illumination is just a bit too much for me.


This is the display board of the Kenwood. I added bits of theatrical lighting gel to cover up the bright blue LEDs. I was going to try and match the color of the VW gauges, but I ultimately decided to use the darkest blue we had to cut down on the brightness.


A closer look at the gel application. The LEDs are super-tiny. You can see an exposed one labled D1 and D2 on the board. D1 is actually a red LED used for the triangle in the Kenwood logo. It's not too bright and can stay as-is. D2 is a blue LED that has yet to be covered. The gel is held on with GE Silicon II.

You can also see some LEDs on the top and bottom of the VFD. I will not be covering these because you can disable them in the head unit's menu system. I will never turn them on because they're just too gaudy for me.


A view of the XM screen on the newly-red Kenwood VFD. The information one the display is highly customizable. I went for a pretty minimalist set of information/effects.


Empeg feeding the Kenwood in AUX mode.


Overview in daylight.


Overview at night.


Closeup at night.