one last thing not player-related: make the carrying bag just a little bit larger - the unit hardly fits - and add something for carrying it on your shoulders (it looked like you could in the pictures at the store)

Before the Empeg carrying cases were available, I put mine in a Case Logic PDC-1 bag. This bag was slightly larger than the empeg bag (as you suggested) and it also had a shoulder strap (as you suggested).

However, the shoulder strap turned out to be a problem.

I had the unit on my shoulder as I was getting out of the car one day, and it slipped off my shoulder and fell to the pavement. The bag was not padded enough to fully protect the unit and it cracked the faceplate.

Since getting the empeg bag, I have never dropped it. Something about its smaller size and the way the handles are designed makes it very stable and hard to drop when I'm handling it. I much prefer the Empeg bag for this reason.

The fact that the bag is small and fits snugly around the player is also a good thing. Yours is new, and it will loosen up over time. Eventually, you will be able to put the empeg away very quickly with no effort. If I lay the case open on the passenger seat, I can pull the empeg from the dash, put it in the bag, and zip it up, all with one hand.

Note: when inserting the empeg into the bag, make sure to open both zippers all the way to the hilt. If you only open the zippers part-way, it will stress the zipper at whatever point you "stopped" at (usually the bottom corners). On my first bag, I eventually wore out the zipper doing this. Now I know better and I'm taking better care of my new bag.

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Tony Fabris