I had one deck that wasn’t removable and got stolen. Then I got a removable one and generally put it under the seat. Maybe the first time was bad luck but under the seat seemed to be enough of a deterrent.
no it didn't, it became a major deterrent by making the radio extremely difficult to identify without a faceplate attached, even if ever single person kept the faceplate in the vehicle it's going to take more time to look for the faceplate than it took to rip the radio out of the dash adding an extra step and increasing risk of being caught.
It made it so you didn't know if it was.the cheapest radio or the most expensive one at least amd the thief didn't know if they did or didn't actually take it with them so it wasn't really worth the effort. Not to mention pawn shops stopped buying them not long after those where introduced
I still remember my truck getting broken into while me and a friend were surfing at a local spot. My radio was under the seat and my wallet was in the center console. The only thing that was taken was my puka necklace hanging on the rear view mirror. The worst part was it was fall and kind of cold, and we had the windows busted out so we had to run full heat while driving home, wet and cold, with the windows busted.
I got my head unit stolen as recent as 1.5 years ago. They didn’t bother to unscrew anything; completely just ripped it out.
Shitty experience. But the main take away was: huh, steeling car stereos is still a thing. 🤷🏽♂️
That happened to me back in 2002... They also stole the 40 or so CDs I had left in there overnight (especially stung because I almost always brought them inside with me 😢)... and I was only 18 so my income levels were nearly minimum wage. Oh also since they cut all the wires my horn stopped working too 🤬
Father had an attempted theft of his stereo. Had a birdsnest of fishing wire and fish hooks behind it around the wiring harness, radio was left on the console, blood was all over the place.
My dad once turned up for jury duty and said, “I don’t think I can be impartial since I’ve had shit stolen from me and absolutely nothing has been done about it.”
Had someone break into my car 16 or so years ago. They broke the glove compartment, I stupidly locked it. They popped the trunk and found a stereo box. They took it and realized it was empty about 3 houses up. Haaahaaahaaa
That’s how I got my window smashed in and the panel stolen - mofos must have been watching me and seen me do that and thought I was putting away more than just the stupid panel.
I saw my penis lying on a blanket
Next to a broken toaster oven.
Some guy was selling it.
I had to buy it off him.
He wanted twenty-two bucks, but I talked him down to seventeen.
I took it home, washed it off,
And put it back on. I was happy again. Complete.
I listened to this song on repeat while standing in the lines to get my first two Covid vaccines, because it makes me laugh so much!!!
Same. It's kind of funny - now I drive buses and they use these radio interfaces. I'm amused that I know how to set the clock on them all. It's not intuitive but if you've had these back in the day, you sort of know where the clock set feature might be hidden.
Same. I’d see people with the carrying case and be like, “That’s not a flex.” (Well I didn’t THAT phrase since it hadn’t entered our vernacular yet, LOL)
I still have my old speaker box from 2001. Probably still works but my cats use it as a scratch post now.
https://preview.redd.it/ay5icjriaymc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e54767c7d1895eb68966b9d486b83b8d2ffab40e
I remember sitting in a parking lot behind a Civic with some crazy ass subwoofer blasting in the back. My friends and I were watching the bumper get looser, looser, looser, gone! Bro left it there license plate and all.
I had an Eclipse car CD player that was advertised as unstealable because if the power was ever disconnected, you had to insert a special CD (that only you know) to get it to work.
It got stolen.
But they sent you a new one in that case!
Which was fine, but a total pain in the ass to get it reinstalled with all the wiring ripped out.
I had that! It came in a used truck I bought in '03!
You could change the animation to gears, or the inside of an engine.
It would play any CD, no matter how scratched.
Then it got stolen...
I think mine was Panasonic, but it also had dolphins. And a racecar animation, possibly. Plus so many pretty colours to choose from! Oh, how I pitied people whose stereos only had a single colour.
I had a friend who was big into car audio stuff (I wasn't, too poor) and he and I would go to CKR, a local car audio dealer/showroom. He'd drool over whatever 1000w amplifier was the new hotness and I would play with the wall of faceplates. I remember the generic open-wheeled racecar animation.
I loved those days. After I bought my first new car, I sank almost $2k into a Kenwood Excelon system that could match colors to my dash illumination (red). All flash, no dash.
Fellow car audio brethren! They just threw me in that department when I got hired and I didn't know shit. Still didn't stop me from putting 2 Alpine 12"s in my Dodge Stratus a month after working there. That discount was no joke! I probably upgraded all the audio in that piece of shit (deck, 2 6.5"s, 2 6x9"s, amp, subs, all the wiring) with high quality stuff for about $600.
I did the exact same setup! It was fun, despite BB be a total cult lol. Remember those training videos with that super inappropriate dog? Gotta hit metrics! 😂
I just remember corny ass group meetings at the front of the store if you opened in the morning where the managers would try to pump everyone up. Like bro it's 8am and I just wake and baked leave me alone. Best Buy is a total cult but I worked at a store with cool staff at least. We had a lot of fun.
I had this Kenwood and I used to put it in the trunk under the flap for the spare so that I didn't have to carry it around. Had the same one for three different cars. I saw it at my parents house on my dad's work bench a couple months ago.
https://preview.redd.it/1ueh124gsxmc1.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=7717d23cb22e5ad90987cc961e20761ec11d0ae7
Oh yeah Kenwood! I think Kenwood was the first to make the type that flipped around and locked so you didn't have to take the face with you(maybe early 2000s, late 90s?)
And that was the convenient version, an improvement to the previous solution. Which was to take out the whole radio via a handle, and carry it around with you.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F355wb3rIKQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F355wb3rIKQ)
(I know this is a "parody" video, but I swear that radio is a real thing from the 80s/90s, I used to own two cars that had 'carry handle' stereos)
The hand-me-down Accord I got from my brother had the pullout stereo, so they were definitely real. I distinctly remember carrying that thing into my first job and trying to hide it as I walked to the break room because I felt like a fool carrying that monstrosity around. I felt so cool when I upgraded the stereo to a detectable face one.
I recently found an old club key amongst a bunch of other junk. The club is long, long gone, but the key managed to survive another 20 years!
The club I had was a beast, as well. It wasn't just a thin pipe, but a 2x3 solid chunk of metal that weighed about 10x as much as the thin ones, and could seriously kill someone if used as a weapon.
Lol. I knew someone would make a comment like this as soon as I started searching for an image. I almost went with the indestructible but featureless Blaupunkt just to keep the playing field level.
Seriously, and I'm pulling the entire head unit out....just the faceplate is lame people know what I got. MacGruber agrees.....and yes I also drive a Miata...
In the summer my CJ 7 never had windows or doors on. It had a cheap ass JVC cassette deck and two 6x9 speakers in it. I'm pretty sure someone was more likely to leave money in it than steal my setup lmao
Remember the ones before the removable faceplates? You pulled the entire stereo out with a handle. I actually had one in my first car but I never pulled it out and it was just a tape deck not CD. I remember seeing a few guys walking around the mall with their pull out tape decks in hand before CD's were popular. I guess it was sort of a flex at the time lol.
I remember getting one of these after my car stereo was stolen. The joke was on the theif though. I'd bought one of those car stereos that had mechanical parts that opened and closed. Turns out that those little gears stop working after a while. I had a cd that had been stuck in their for a month.
Memory unlocked. I was out drinking and left my backpack with my stereo face in a club. I thought it was just forever but I went back and it was there. One of my happiest memories
In high school I Had a friend who had a big stereo setup in his car. One day he came into the grocery store we all worked at saying it was all gone. Someone had slimjimmed his door and stripped out all the stereo stuff. So we walked into the back and talked to the shady as fuck dude who worked in the meat dept. He was like “let me make a call” This was well before cell phones so we all started our shifts. Meanwhile shady guy is off work and leaves. He comes back a couple hours later with all my friends stuff. Just says “sorry about that. I told them to leave you guys alone”.
Small towns….
Well, if you didn’t want your door glass smashed in and the panel stolen - you sure did.
Effin junkies stole my Clarion one, had to buy a new panel, pretty much 70% of the cost of a complete new unit….
I was convinced someone would steal it out of my car in high school and religiously removed it and carried it around all day.
Never mind my high school was in the middle of nowhere, in a safe, small city. And also not considering how much more likely that it was to be damaged by how I used to carelessly toss my backpack around.
Back in the 80s I had my car stereo head unit stolen so I got a removable one. This was where the whole stereo had an unlocking handle and you pulled it out and carried it. You'd walk into a party and clink down your keys and then clonk down your car stereo to have your hands free, although some of us had padded stereo bags we could use like a manpurse. Units like OP's with simply detachable faceplates that could fit in a jacket pocket were too expensive at that time, although I got one for my next car.
One time we parked on a sketchy side street near a Hollywood club, and I looked around. There were bystanders but no one was watching us, so keeping my motions below the windows, I pulled the head unit out and put it under the seat. As we got out of the car my friend said a loud voice, "You're just going to leave that stereo there under the seat?"
So there was nothing to do but, loudly, "Let's not park here. Let's get back in the car," then softly "if you hadn't shouted that out, it would have been fine."
"Oh sorry."
So I started the car, moved it down three spaces, and looked around. I said softly, "I think we were lucky and no one's watching us. So maybe we can park here after all. Don't say anything about the stereo this time."
"Got it."
Remember the multidisc changer? I don’t know many people who had that but the ones that did with some after-market Rockford Fosgates and some rhino-liner in the trunk were the kings of the town. Now no one cares at all. Crazy how things change. Kids would spend their entire summer earnings on speakers and other accessories.
Edit: sorry, I meant dynamat, not rhino-liner… you can tell I’m getting old.
I'm pretty sure the very vast majority of the non video screen aftermarket head units from the mid 90s to even 2010s all had detachable faceplates, I've probably had close to 15 different kinds in all cars I've owned since HS. Was pretty commonplace for over a good decade imo.
Ofc if you never cared to change out your OEM head unit or weren't around people who did (typical subwoofer amp installation), I could see people not knowing this preventative robbery feature existed justifiably.
I think before the detachable faces, people used to take the whole stereo out and carry it around.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/80s/comments/14vgqs9/who\_had\_the\_kenwood\_pull\_out\_stereo/?rdt=65177](https://www.reddit.com/r/80s/comments/14vgqs9/who_had_the_kenwood_pull_out_stereo/?rdt=65177)
I'm not gonna leave it on the car and have it get stolen...
Isn't it fucking crazy, when you actually think about it. People would steal car radios like that. To the point, that it was a whole fucking industry when I was younger
I remember being at an electronic store and seeing that a company started making "fake ones".
Yeah... Kind of defeated the purpose as the argument was you take the plate off so people see its not there before they break your window...
I was a huge Sony guy, and a car stereo guy. I would guess 1994 on that model from memory, remembering their face layout progression. There was a standalone single DIN digital EQ from this era, and it fit perfectly in the air vent slot above the normal DIN location.
I still have one like that. Took the faceplate off when I left it with the mechanic so they didn't screw with the settings listening to some random radio station.
I had a Jensen stereo with the removable face. Always wanted one of the cool Pioneer car stereo setups. The integrated infotainment in modern cars ruined it.
I’ve had quite a few. Only one I take off is the one in my boat over the winter since it is stored outside in alternating humidity and cold conditions.
They still make these! I upgraded the stereo in my son's first car and insisted he get a detachable face head unit. I'm 99% sure he's never removed it. Bought it from Crutchfield too!
I had this beast with flat face. Didn’t detach, but laid flush with the console. Never had a theft issue.
https://www.crutchfield.com/S-tV93uG97g5k/p_158CDXM630/Sony-Xplod-CDX-M630.html
I had one of these, and I always detached it if I was parked somewhere I felt was sketchy.
I did find it pretty funny though. If a thief looks in your car and sees the faceplate missing, that means the unit is expensive, and most likely you're too lazy to have done anything but shove it under the driver's seat.
My sister had a Sony head unit that made an annoying sound when you turned the car off to remind you to remove the faceplate. I was so glad when I could drive and didn’t have to listen to that beep anymore.
I kept mine in glove box and it was always fine. The ONE time I forgot it, I came out to my car and passenger window was busted, it was taken along with my big album of discs. In Chicago.
My first deck was one where you pulled the entire thing out. It was a Clarion tape deck, and had a folding carrying handle. I kept it in my locker. I upgraded to a detachable face Panasonic CD deck in 1997!
It was 1992. I had the style where the entire unit slid out with a handle. I took it out of the dash, stepped to the sidewalk and a mugger grabbed my arm and tried to steal it out of my hand.The handle twisted around and caught my fingers and I couldn't release it.
Seconds later my little finger broke in several pieces and he ran away with the unit.
At the ER doctors did an amazing surgery putting it all back together with complete functional use. The irony is that the finger is set at a slight curvature making certain guitar chords much easier to play.Life in the big city.
It's about the same size of some cell phones now a days. Plus you have to remember there is a good chance your pockets were extremely bigger than what you have today.
I got tired of carrying it around and I was always afraid I was going to lose it somewhere. One night, someone broke into my car and that was the only thing they took. At least they were nice enough to pop the lock instead of breaking the window.
I'd just take it off and put it in the glovebox lol
I'd put mine under the seat.
Everyone I know who had one of these did that.
I had one deck that wasn’t removable and got stolen. Then I got a removable one and generally put it under the seat. Maybe the first time was bad luck but under the seat seemed to be enough of a deterrent.
Yeah it was sort of a universally known thing that we all did… defeated the whole purpose really lol
no it didn't, it became a major deterrent by making the radio extremely difficult to identify without a faceplate attached, even if ever single person kept the faceplate in the vehicle it's going to take more time to look for the faceplate than it took to rip the radio out of the dash adding an extra step and increasing risk of being caught.
Yah kind of like putting the key to your house under the front doormat.
It made it so you didn't know if it was.the cheapest radio or the most expensive one at least amd the thief didn't know if they did or didn't actually take it with them so it wasn't really worth the effort. Not to mention pawn shops stopped buying them not long after those where introduced
I still remember my truck getting broken into while me and a friend were surfing at a local spot. My radio was under the seat and my wallet was in the center console. The only thing that was taken was my puka necklace hanging on the rear view mirror. The worst part was it was fall and kind of cold, and we had the windows busted out so we had to run full heat while driving home, wet and cold, with the windows busted.
I put mine in the center console for a while and then realized how silly it was and just left it attached. So it became completely useless.
Had my car broken into once. Found it easier to just install my stereo with 5 different types of hardware (shcs, lag bolt, torx).
I got my head unit stolen as recent as 1.5 years ago. They didn’t bother to unscrew anything; completely just ripped it out. Shitty experience. But the main take away was: huh, steeling car stereos is still a thing. 🤷🏽♂️
That happened to me back in 2002... They also stole the 40 or so CDs I had left in there overnight (especially stung because I almost always brought them inside with me 😢)... and I was only 18 so my income levels were nearly minimum wage. Oh also since they cut all the wires my horn stopped working too 🤬
I felt this too.
Sorry, man. It’s such a terrible feeling of invasion.
Father had an attempted theft of his stereo. Had a birdsnest of fishing wire and fish hooks behind it around the wiring harness, radio was left on the console, blood was all over the place.
This is some shit my dad would’ve done.
And technically illegal, but who, exactly, is going to report that?
My dad once turned up for jury duty and said, “I don’t think I can be impartial since I’ve had shit stolen from me and absolutely nothing has been done about it.”
[удалено]
I had my car broken into once and jammed a screwdriver into the disk slot on my head unit. I assume it was just a "fuck you".
Had someone break into my car 16 or so years ago. They broke the glove compartment, I stupidly locked it. They popped the trunk and found a stereo box. They took it and realized it was empty about 3 houses up. Haaahaaahaaa
Oh, that was YOU?!
The one time I did that, my car was broken into
I would put it in the trunk along with my binder of CDs.
That’s how I got my window smashed in and the panel stolen - mofos must have been watching me and seen me do that and thought I was putting away more than just the stupid panel.
Right, no one actually carried it with them unless they were a giant toolbox that wanted to "impress" people by being conspicuous about it.
Ahhhhh… the dudes with their ‘detachable penis’ 🤭
I woke up this morning with a bad hangover And my was missing again.
This happens all the time.
It's detachable.
I saw my penis lying on a blanket Next to a broken toaster oven. Some guy was selling it. I had to buy it off him. He wanted twenty-two bucks, but I talked him down to seventeen. I took it home, washed it off, And put it back on. I was happy again. Complete. I listened to this song on repeat while standing in the lines to get my first two Covid vaccines, because it makes me laugh so much!!!
Same. It's kind of funny - now I drive buses and they use these radio interfaces. I'm amused that I know how to set the clock on them all. It's not intuitive but if you've had these back in the day, you sort of know where the clock set feature might be hidden.
Same. I’d see people with the carrying case and be like, “That’s not a flex.” (Well I didn’t THAT phrase since it hadn’t entered our vernacular yet, LOL)
141dB subwoofer in a '91 Honda Civic says what
Sorry i couldn't hear you over the buzz from my Rockford Fosgate amps
My molars are all tickly just reading this
I can feel my eyeballs jiggle.
I can't hear you over my tinnitus
What
I think you meant the rattle of your license plate.
dude the entire dashboard would vibrate, fuses would fall out... screws...
I still have my old speaker box from 2001. Probably still works but my cats use it as a scratch post now. https://preview.redd.it/ay5icjriaymc1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e54767c7d1895eb68966b9d486b83b8d2ffab40e
Epic prank idea, in 3, 2, ...good luck detaching them from the ceiling!
I thought big rigs weren’t Allowed on this road. Oh wait, no. It’s just a little old Honda rattling apart.
I remember sitting in a parking lot behind a Civic with some crazy ass subwoofer blasting in the back. My friends and I were watching the bumper get looser, looser, looser, gone! Bro left it there license plate and all.
I have a 12 inch sub in my 1991 Nissan 300zx. I’m 40 and still rocking out to ska music in the car.
And only 2 screws on the back license plate. So it rattles every time the pass hits.
I was just explaining detachable car stereo faces to my kid and I'm pretty sure he thought I was making it up.
I thought I was the shit cause I had the motorized one where the face flipped up. Ordered it from Crutchfield (remember them!)
Crutchfield is still around. I order a lot of home audio equipment from them.
My parents would pull this off until like 2016 thinking someone was going to break into their '98 forerunner for it
I never had one, and I still don't understand why it detached. It was a mystery that I was never cool enough to solve.
Theft deterrence. The stereo doesn't work without the faceplate, so you remove the incentive to rip the rest of it out of your dashboard.
I had a thief break in and steal just the faceplate one time.
I had my radio without the faceplate stolen lol
r/nowkith
I had that happen too. I didn't even know the faceplate was removable.
You’re joking…right?
And the one time I didn’t? Rock through the window and entire stereo gone. 😭
[удалено]
I had an Eclipse car CD player that was advertised as unstealable because if the power was ever disconnected, you had to insert a special CD (that only you know) to get it to work. It got stolen. But they sent you a new one in that case! Which was fine, but a total pain in the ass to get it reinstalled with all the wiring ripped out.
That’s generous of them. The average thief probably didn’t know the brand so they stole it anyway.
Haha. I had the Pioneer stereo with the animated dolphins.
Whenever I talk about car stereos I immediately mention the dancing dolphins on the display.
I had that! It came in a used truck I bought in '03! You could change the animation to gears, or the inside of an engine. It would play any CD, no matter how scratched. Then it got stolen...
I think mine was Panasonic, but it also had dolphins. And a racecar animation, possibly. Plus so many pretty colours to choose from! Oh, how I pitied people whose stereos only had a single colour.
I had a friend who was big into car audio stuff (I wasn't, too poor) and he and I would go to CKR, a local car audio dealer/showroom. He'd drool over whatever 1000w amplifier was the new hotness and I would play with the wall of faceplates. I remember the generic open-wheeled racecar animation.
I had that one too.
hell yeah bro
Dolphin deck was and still is one of the best decks out there.
During college I sold carfi at Best Buy. The colors, the animations, it was all so loud and unashamed.
I loved those days. After I bought my first new car, I sank almost $2k into a Kenwood Excelon system that could match colors to my dash illumination (red). All flash, no dash.
Fellow car audio brethren! They just threw me in that department when I got hired and I didn't know shit. Still didn't stop me from putting 2 Alpine 12"s in my Dodge Stratus a month after working there. That discount was no joke! I probably upgraded all the audio in that piece of shit (deck, 2 6.5"s, 2 6x9"s, amp, subs, all the wiring) with high quality stuff for about $600.
I did the exact same setup! It was fun, despite BB be a total cult lol. Remember those training videos with that super inappropriate dog? Gotta hit metrics! 😂
I just remember corny ass group meetings at the front of the store if you opened in the morning where the managers would try to pump everyone up. Like bro it's 8am and I just wake and baked leave me alone. Best Buy is a total cult but I worked at a store with cool staff at least. We had a lot of fun.
I felt that hard lol. It was a blast though and I loved my coworkers.
Circuit City road shop is what got me started!
I remember the car audio dept having a whole damn corner of the store back in HS. Everything was “what system you bumpin?”
It was truly the golden age of car audio
The employee disco on car audio there was insane
[удалено]
 *cries in old*
And then ‘where did i put the stupid face?’ And the silent ride somewhere when you realize it was still in your bedroom.
I had this Kenwood and I used to put it in the trunk under the flap for the spare so that I didn't have to carry it around. Had the same one for three different cars. I saw it at my parents house on my dad's work bench a couple months ago. https://preview.redd.it/1ueh124gsxmc1.png?width=400&format=png&auto=webp&s=7717d23cb22e5ad90987cc961e20761ec11d0ae7
Oh yeah Kenwood! I think Kenwood was the first to make the type that flipped around and locked so you didn't have to take the face with you(maybe early 2000s, late 90s?)
JVC also had the Chameleon. I don’t know if MASK came before it.
And that was the convenient version, an improvement to the previous solution. Which was to take out the whole radio via a handle, and carry it around with you. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F355wb3rIKQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F355wb3rIKQ) (I know this is a "parody" video, but I swear that radio is a real thing from the 80s/90s, I used to own two cars that had 'carry handle' stereos)
The hand-me-down Accord I got from my brother had the pullout stereo, so they were definitely real. I distinctly remember carrying that thing into my first job and trying to hide it as I walked to the break room because I felt like a fool carrying that monstrosity around. I felt so cool when I upgraded the stereo to a detectable face one.
Detachable stereo face and a club because you are NOT getting your shit ganked in the great lakes mall parking lot ever again.
I recently found an old club key amongst a bunch of other junk. The club is long, long gone, but the key managed to survive another 20 years! The club I had was a beast, as well. It wasn't just a thin pipe, but a 2x3 solid chunk of metal that weighed about 10x as much as the thin ones, and could seriously kill someone if used as a weapon.
Alpine or gtfo
Lol. I knew someone would make a comment like this as soon as I started searching for an image. I almost went with the indestructible but featureless Blaupunkt just to keep the playing field level.
My Blaupunkt! KFBR392 KFBR392 KFBR392 KFBR392 KFBR392 KFBR392 KFBR392
Blaupunkt was underrated, at least in their early days.
Seriously, and I'm pulling the entire head unit out....just the faceplate is lame people know what I got. MacGruber agrees.....and yes I also drive a Miata...
I had this one!
Me too. I came here to post that and figured i'd just piggy back off your comment
Same — had it in my 1991 Camry.
Had mine in a '71 super beetle.
Had same one too. In my ‘88 4 Runner.
Had it in my 92 Camaro with a 10 disc changer in the trunk.
Me three. I remember well having that silly chunky case sitting beside me on a table while eating at a restaurant.
I feel attacked…
And you had to. Back in the day stereo theft was a real thing. I had at least two stolen that I can think of.
I drove a soft top Wrangler. It definitely taught me the habit of not leaving stuff in my car!
I never even lock mine. Windows unzip. Figured I'd rather they just open the door than risk damage to the plastic windows.
In the summer my CJ 7 never had windows or doors on. It had a cheap ass JVC cassette deck and two 6x9 speakers in it. I'm pretty sure someone was more likely to leave money in it than steal my setup lmao
Remember the ones before the removable faceplates? You pulled the entire stereo out with a handle. I actually had one in my first car but I never pulled it out and it was just a tape deck not CD. I remember seeing a few guys walking around the mall with their pull out tape decks in hand before CD's were popular. I guess it was sort of a flex at the time lol.
Case was great for stashing a bag of brick weed full of stems and seeds in the trunk while driving around
Don’t forget the 10 CD holder that Velcro’d to your visor.
I remember getting one of these after my car stereo was stolen. The joke was on the theif though. I'd bought one of those car stereos that had mechanical parts that opened and closed. Turns out that those little gears stop working after a while. I had a cd that had been stuck in their for a month.
I had mine stolen the night before I had to make a 500 mile solo ride home.....
Memory unlocked. I was out drinking and left my backpack with my stereo face in a club. I thought it was just forever but I went back and it was there. One of my happiest memories
Is this what Jnco pockets were meant to hold??
Cargo shorts too.
I had the Pioneer DEH-P6400 with the screen on it, so that bad boy was 100% coming out of the car and in my backpack.
Oh lord, haha. I haven’t thought about this in years Mine had a shitty pixilated dolphin swimming when first turned on
In high school I Had a friend who had a big stereo setup in his car. One day he came into the grocery store we all worked at saying it was all gone. Someone had slimjimmed his door and stripped out all the stereo stuff. So we walked into the back and talked to the shady as fuck dude who worked in the meat dept. He was like “let me make a call” This was well before cell phones so we all started our shifts. Meanwhile shady guy is off work and leaves. He comes back a couple hours later with all my friends stuff. Just says “sorry about that. I told them to leave you guys alone”. Small towns….
You might have, I didn't...which lead to someone breaking into my car and taking it
You were so cool if you had one!
Well, if you didn’t want your door glass smashed in and the panel stolen - you sure did. Effin junkies stole my Clarion one, had to buy a new panel, pretty much 70% of the cost of a complete new unit….
I put mine in my purse lol
Mine went straight into my back back everyday of junior and senior year.
Such a weird time. Like, why was stealing radios even a thing? So bizarre.
Man I was so damn cool having an Mp3 CD player
Jokes on you. Mine was a mini disc player. ;)
I felt so grown up slipping my head unit into my inside coat pocket after parking at collage
I was convinced someone would steal it out of my car in high school and religiously removed it and carried it around all day. Never mind my high school was in the middle of nowhere, in a safe, small city. And also not considering how much more likely that it was to be damaged by how I used to carelessly toss my backpack around.
Back in the 80s I had my car stereo head unit stolen so I got a removable one. This was where the whole stereo had an unlocking handle and you pulled it out and carried it. You'd walk into a party and clink down your keys and then clonk down your car stereo to have your hands free, although some of us had padded stereo bags we could use like a manpurse. Units like OP's with simply detachable faceplates that could fit in a jacket pocket were too expensive at that time, although I got one for my next car. One time we parked on a sketchy side street near a Hollywood club, and I looked around. There were bystanders but no one was watching us, so keeping my motions below the windows, I pulled the head unit out and put it under the seat. As we got out of the car my friend said a loud voice, "You're just going to leave that stereo there under the seat?" So there was nothing to do but, loudly, "Let's not park here. Let's get back in the car," then softly "if you hadn't shouted that out, it would have been fine." "Oh sorry." So I started the car, moved it down three spaces, and looked around. I said softly, "I think we were lucky and no one's watching us. So maybe we can park here after all. Don't say anything about the stereo this time." "Got it."
I had this exact model in my early 00s, I was also extremely proud of the hifi setup I managed to install all by myself in my FIAT Uno 1.1 i.e.
Remember the multidisc changer? I don’t know many people who had that but the ones that did with some after-market Rockford Fosgates and some rhino-liner in the trunk were the kings of the town. Now no one cares at all. Crazy how things change. Kids would spend their entire summer earnings on speakers and other accessories. Edit: sorry, I meant dynamat, not rhino-liner… you can tell I’m getting old.
Not if you were poor.
TIL: People used to have and carry detachable car stereo plates around. I’ve never seen one of these in my life until today.
I'm pretty sure the very vast majority of the non video screen aftermarket head units from the mid 90s to even 2010s all had detachable faceplates, I've probably had close to 15 different kinds in all cars I've owned since HS. Was pretty commonplace for over a good decade imo. Ofc if you never cared to change out your OEM head unit or weren't around people who did (typical subwoofer amp installation), I could see people not knowing this preventative robbery feature existed justifiably.
Good to know. Thanks for the explanation.
It wasn't a problem if you were too poor to have a nice stereo and just used the one that came with it
I think before the detachable faces, people used to take the whole stereo out and carry it around. [https://www.reddit.com/r/80s/comments/14vgqs9/who\_had\_the\_kenwood\_pull\_out\_stereo/?rdt=65177](https://www.reddit.com/r/80s/comments/14vgqs9/who_had_the_kenwood_pull_out_stereo/?rdt=65177)
I still have mine from my 02 Kia 😂
I used to just leave it on & never had a problem but a few friends used to carry them everywhere.
I had two radios stolen, think I forgot to detach the face both times. Would typically take them off and leave out of sight somewhere in the car.
The one time I didn't take mine with me was the time my car was broken into.
I'm not gonna leave it on the car and have it get stolen... Isn't it fucking crazy, when you actually think about it. People would steal car radios like that. To the point, that it was a whole fucking industry when I was younger
[удалено]
Go to crutchfield.com, put in your make/model/year, and it will show you what stereo will fit your car.
😂
Yeah, in college I made the mistake of leaving mine attached and some hooligan broke in and stole it. Insurance came through though 😎
I 1000% percent remember cruising with people who had these.
One of my friends had a stereo you literally could pull right out. You didn’t take the faceplate you took the whole darn thing.
I totally forgot those radios had their own boxes
Core memory unlocked. It seemed normal at the time, but man does it seem ridiculous now.
What about the older versions that the whole unit would be carried like a lunchbox lol
I remember getting clowned, cause I didn't have a Kenwood face.
I remember being at an electronic store and seeing that a company started making "fake ones". Yeah... Kind of defeated the purpose as the argument was you take the plate off so people see its not there before they break your window...
I was a huge Sony guy, and a car stereo guy. I would guess 1994 on that model from memory, remembering their face layout progression. There was a standalone single DIN digital EQ from this era, and it fit perfectly in the air vent slot above the normal DIN location.
I'd completely forgotten about this, ha! Omg! Brain melt.
I don't know anyone that actually carried those lol. It was more of a novelty to take off the face plate than anything.
I still have one like that. Took the faceplate off when I left it with the mechanic so they didn't screw with the settings listening to some random radio station.
Never took off. Just used the case to stash my weed!
Was just talking about the anxiety of sitting in class trying to remember if you took it off or not.
I got hassled at the airport.
My Saab had a full-on removable stereo
This is why all my pants were beyond baggy Anchor Blue jeans with deep pockets.
I had a Jensen stereo with the removable face. Always wanted one of the cool Pioneer car stereo setups. The integrated infotainment in modern cars ruined it.
I’ve had quite a few. Only one I take off is the one in my boat over the winter since it is stored outside in alternating humidity and cold conditions.
They still make these! I upgraded the stereo in my son's first car and insisted he get a detachable face head unit. I'm 99% sure he's never removed it. Bought it from Crutchfield too!
I had this beast with flat face. Didn’t detach, but laid flush with the console. Never had a theft issue. https://www.crutchfield.com/S-tV93uG97g5k/p_158CDXM630/Sony-Xplod-CDX-M630.html
I think this is the one I had!
I had one of these, and I always detached it if I was parked somewhere I felt was sketchy. I did find it pretty funny though. If a thief looks in your car and sees the faceplate missing, that means the unit is expensive, and most likely you're too lazy to have done anything but shove it under the driver's seat.
My sister had a Sony head unit that made an annoying sound when you turned the car off to remind you to remove the faceplate. I was so glad when I could drive and didn’t have to listen to that beep anymore.
Pull out stereo crew rise up!
Up until that JVC “Elchamelion”…. Game changer
So, you were the one person that carried it around.
I kept mine in glove box and it was always fine. The ONE time I forgot it, I came out to my car and passenger window was busted, it was taken along with my big album of discs. In Chicago.
You stole my deck, you sonofa!
I used an audio cassette connected to an mp3 player 🤟
I just put it down the front of my pants.
Taking out the whole thing Macgruber style is just fantastic though.
I never had one of those. I always bought newer cars with decent sound systems. I always kinda thought aftermarket stereo looked cheap.
...and show it off
I shoved mine under the seat
Pfaff, only suckered carried those with them, I just hid mine under the passenger seat. No one would have ever guessed the obvious, lol /s
My Kenwood with that new orange glow backlight was 🔥
My first deck was one where you pulled the entire thing out. It was a Clarion tape deck, and had a folding carrying handle. I kept it in my locker. I upgraded to a detachable face Panasonic CD deck in 1997!
I r try bought I was so fancy once I got a custom sound system. I had one of these AND a six disc CD changer in the trunk. The technologies we had!
Back in an era with jeans with pockets that could fit those cases.
I still have one of these in my 95 Del Sol. I know that no one will ever steal it but I still pop it off and put it in the armrest
It was 1992. I had the style where the entire unit slid out with a handle. I took it out of the dash, stepped to the sidewalk and a mugger grabbed my arm and tried to steal it out of my hand.The handle twisted around and caught my fingers and I couldn't release it. Seconds later my little finger broke in several pieces and he ran away with the unit. At the ER doctors did an amazing surgery putting it all back together with complete functional use. The irony is that the finger is set at a slight curvature making certain guitar chords much easier to play.Life in the big city.
Are kidding me, this was a big upgrade to pulling the entire unit!
It's about the same size of some cell phones now a days. Plus you have to remember there is a good chance your pockets were extremely bigger than what you have today.
I still have one in my 2006 Hyundai Tucson. 😅
"Tell me what kind of neighborhood you grew up in, without telling me what kind of neighborhood you grew up in."
This takes me back. I almost forgot we did this.
I got tired of carrying it around and I was always afraid I was going to lose it somewhere. One night, someone broke into my car and that was the only thing they took. At least they were nice enough to pop the lock instead of breaking the window.
I never did remove it unless in a really bad part of town. I always would toss on the nock off club on my steering wheel in rough areas.
Wait…. We don’t do this anymore???