It's not the overall quality and performance of their products, it's the support and repair issues that they have. Eclipse has gotten super anal over the passed year about their warranty, and on top of that they are hardly licensing any new dealers, and taking licenses away from some dealers for not properly endorsing their products. I'm always on the lookout for oldschool Eclipse stuff, but even to this day they still manufacture a high quality product and you really do get what you pay for. Then again, I do have a Pioneer Premiere series headunit in my work truck that I absolutely love.

 

Eclipse's downfall was when they decided to venture into the new car dealership expeditor market. This caused huge shortcuts in manufacturing and quality control, killed their R&D and innovations, and basically turned them into a dealer-level (read:crappy) company. They are another one who sold out for quantity a couple of years ago and now they are paying for it dearly. The dealer expeditor market is WAY down-more and more new vehicles come equipped with factory navigation anyway, and they don't have the huge pockets like Audiovox (under the Advent and Jensen brands) to take that big of a hit. Alpine kinda took over that market, then messed up in allot of other ways which has hindered their growth.

Funny how the HUGE mass produced companies like JVC and Pioneer have basically taken over that higher end segment of the market now. Panasonic was getting there but exited the 12 volt market all together last year. Clarion-kinda always been the "Saab" of the 12 volt world (in a bad way). We are left with what we are left with...

 

Hmm I am very intrigued on what you think is a good ipod interface. With my 5000 I thought it was pretty much as good as it can get for single din HU, and it worked fast. The 7000 series are raived about by SQ enthusiasts and put up with the clarion dxz and 9887.

 

I was always very happy with the quality of the 7000 series, but that big goofy knob makes me barf. We sold hundreds, maybe thousands of Eclipse HU's at Empire and had less than a small handful fail. I think Eclipse still makes a good product, but they're not the easiest company to deal with either. Eclipse's parent company is huge in Japan and has all the money they could need, but they're also very smart and they don't just hand Eclipse money to waste. In Japan and Korea Eclipse is one of the top brands, but it's never gained that traction here. I've heard rumors that Fujitsu has considered pulling them from the US market in the near future if they don't start making money. I know they have fired their entire north American engineering staff already, so the US Eclipse is now totally reliant on the Japanese company to develop products. Not a good sign!

 

This.


edit: to be fair, I haven't messed with the 7200mkII.

 

I personally think Eclipse is good stuff but pricey

 

i might have liked the 7000 better just because of the color display instead of my black and white 5100.

The Eq settings were alot more detailed also but not like the previous years. Once again in order to recieve that special unit you had to pay a good chunk of change. My ipod interface (ipc-106) is slow sometimes and even freezes up. I have to change to CD mode or something and come back to it. I have also had to reboot my IPOD twice because of it. So far it hasnt given me any troubles. Doesnt matter. i'm getting a Pioneer P4100 double din for my S-10 tomorrow

Ohh and not to mention they had a recall or problem with thse models getting the motorized face stuck. Even after resetting they wouldnt work. I sent mine back with in the first month

 

And yes i bought my interface new ond not refurbished. If i were to get another Eclipse it would be the 8volt previous models.

Eclipse fixed my previous broken one for 95 shipped. Awesome customer service if you ask me.

 

stuffing all these wires was no fun. theres at least 2 feet behing the glove box.

 

This is a Grand Marquis we have done a little bit to so far.



Some Image Dynamic CTX65's in the front doors.





Thats 4 Image Dynamics CTX69's in the back dash and we vented his back dash to allow more Bass to travel into the car.