Today I hopped in the car, started it up, and connected the faceplate to my Kenwood KDC-X659, per routine. I didn't have my empeg with me because it's such a short drive to work, I stopped bothering.

I use this CD Receiver mostly as an amplifier for my empeg, by connecting the empeg's front outputs to the Aux In on the back of the Kenwood. So the Receiver started up in Aux, since that's where it was last time, and I promptly changed the source to FM, to listen to the radio on the way to work.

Five seconds later, it shuts off. No button press on the faceplate gets a response. Removing the faceplate and pressing the eject button causes the appropriate mechanics to move inside, but otherwise it will not operate.

Before I start troubleshooting tomorrow morning, are there any simple things that I might check first?

Make sure you in fact do have a Kenwood. But from the description (it breaking and no longer working) it sounds like it's definitely a Kenwood. But if you can peel back a label to discover it's actually made by someone else, it'll probably start working again.

Sorry, I've just had bad experience with Kenwood. Also, I've made a few really helpful replies in the past few minutes, I thought I needed a little joke one.

Bruno

Oh, it's definitely a Kenwood. And I was hoping not to hear what you just said, that people have commonly experience problems with their products. I've never heard anything of the sort, but that doesn't mean it isn't true. It's been operating fine for many months now.

So far the possibilities are that the fuse blew, that it needs to be reset for some unknown reason, or that somehow, the accessory wire came loose. The last is highly unlikely. But if any of these are the case, I'll probably be outside in the cold all day attempting to guess my security code.

The fuse was the common problem with my Kenwood deck as well. Before it completely died.

But I'm not saying yours will suffer the same fate if it turns out to be your fuse. Nor that it's suffered that fate already. Try to get yourself into a garage somewhere if you can. I'd do stuff like that in the underground parking lot at work if I had to right now.

Bruno

That is some sketchy behavior.

I just went outside to mess with it, because the current temperature is higher than the predicted temperature for any time tomorrow.

Hitting the reset button woke it up, and it didn't take long for me to guess my code. After all, I'm the one who picked it. But tomorrow I have the tedious task of changing all of the now factory settings back to what I had chosen.

I still have no idea as to why it suddenly decided to disable itself, though.

Your description makes it sound like a loose power connection of some kind. On the memory wire. You said it was cold, and that the problem came and went, and that it caused the unit to forget its settings. Was your wiring crimped or soldered? I'd look for a loose crimp.

The problem hasn't come and gone. This is the only time it has happened. And since hitting the reset button magically fixed it, I may not disbelieve some people's stories about the (lack of) reliability of Kenwood units.

I crimped the connections when I originally installed it, since I'm not exactly an expert with a soldering iron. They were all fine, and still are.

So, as it stands now, it's working fine, and I have all of my settings put back into the unit. If this sort of thing becomes a recurring problem, I'll be looking at ditching the head unit altogether and doing a proper amp install sooner than I had planned to. I don't use the radio or CD functions of the unit very often anway; it's more of an in-dash amplifier for me.