Well I just installed my Empeg into my VW new beetle and must say it is pretty cool. I was lucky enough to get a tuner for it. I ordered my Rio Car from SB on the 27th of Dec and the site said the tuner was out of stock but I placed an order for one anyway and was lucky enough to get one.

Anyway.. I have the tuner hooked up and the FM part is working awesome. I thought the tuner was FM only put the little manual that comes with it talks about AM but when I tune it to AM I get no channels but just static.

So what is the story with AM? Does it work?

Thanks

Sounds like you may have gotten a miswired tuner wiring harness. Am should come in nice and clear. contact [email protected] Glad to see you finally gave in and bought an empeg. I remember you saying way back in the day that "the empeg is the player for you if you like fancy visuals, otherwise get a neo" The price drop obviously made you change your mind. Anyway, enjoy your empeg!

Sean

The Empeg has always been better.

I always thought the Empeg was awesome but a lot of people coult not afford it for the price it was currently selling at back then ($1200 for a 10Gb unit). The Neo was a cheap option for those that wanted a bunch of music in their car for around $300-$400. Back in Sep I even did a review for forbes magazine and told them the Rio Car was the "Top Shelf" product of mp3 players.
http://www.funmp3players.com/temp/forbes.jpg

With the price of Empegs so cheap now, somebody would be crazy to get the neo instead of the empeg. I have 2 Empegs now, one in the home and one in the car.

Thanks for the info on the tuner, I will send an e-mail over to support.

It's not a wiring harness issue, it's an antenna power issue. You need an antenna power adaptor to feed power to the new beetle's antenna (I know this, I have a new beetle too!) - without this, you won't get *any* AM, and FM is a lot weaker than it should be.

There is an antenna amp in the base of the roof aerial.

Hugo

I knew it was one of the two things. I thought that without the amp, the FM would sound like crap too.

Sean

Cool, I didn't know you did an interview with forbes. Thanks for the plug :-)

Sean

That explains why my blaupunkt radio I had in before did not get any reception. I always thought when I put the headunit back in the antenna got unplugged but I never bothered to fix it.

Right now the empeg is showing full reception on FM.

Do I have to buy some aftermarket antenna power adapter or do I just have to take the power antenna wire from the empeg tuner and somehow connect it to the bettle antenna?

This is covered by this FAQ entry.

"Give a man a fish..."

I guess this is what I need but I am not sure
http://www.sfxaudio.com/products/dispItem.asp?ProdId=90119

Now the problem is the antenna plug is wrong for the empeg tuner so I will have to put another adapter on this to get it back to normal.

Adapters on Adapters, what has the world come to

Looks very much like the VW part, except for VWs inclusion of (rather useless, as not all leads are included) male and female ISO adapters so that you can plug it in between car and HU ISO connectors. And that the VW part uses the "new style" connectors.

Here in Sweden they wanted the equivalent to US$30 for it.

/Michael

I got it all working. A local stereo shop had one in stock but did not have the adapter to plug it into the empeg tuner. I then looked in the tuner box and there was an adapter that empeg included! Yeah! So now I have it in and I am getting AM and FM and they sound great.

Thanks everybody for your help.