So Pioneer Remotes do not work without hacking.

Ummm there's a Kenwood steering wheel remote but I have a Kenwood head unit so its codes would cause problems in my setup. I also don't like the design of it compared to the Pioneer.

The hacking you have to do to get a Pioneer remote working is minimal. Frank's IR trans comes with basic IR codes for the Pioneer pre-programmed, so it's basically flash and go. I hacked mine to allow for twice the number of codes, that's purely optional.