Blaupunkt Car Tape Decks

[Scorpion8]

Been thinking about pulling my Alpine CD unit that came in my Ford Contour daily driver, and putting in a tape unit. I have a Blaupunkt RPC-430 tape head unit already, but have been perusing Blaupunkt units on the auction place. Anybody (retrokeeper?) have any opinions on Blaupunkt units, which I know came OEM in a few European auto models.

Any opinions on Blaupunkt?

[retrokeeper]

Well....Blaupunkt wasn't in the league with Alpine or Pioneer,more with the likes of Kenwood,Clarion,and to a lesser degree,Sanyo.They did have some nice options and features,again more geared toward the European "look" and "feel".My wife had a nice setup I installed for her years ago in her 89 Firebird,it had a gooseneck supplied control head and a separate tape deck that fit in the OEM-DIN radio space.Their autosound offerings were decent,never owned any CD players by them,just cassette/am-fm stereo offerings.In the business I had back in the days,I installed a few Blaupunkt pieces,I liked the sound...and so did the customer.I do have some brochures I can scan in if you need to know anything in pecticular. Rob

[Scorpion8]

Rob. Am a little surprised at your opinion. Considering Blaupunkt came as OEM on some pretty pricey cars like Porsche and BWM and others from Germany, so either they were Euro-snobs in marketing, or they were some pretty good head units. Do you happen to have a brochure on the RPC-430 that I have?

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p141/Scorpion008/BlaupunktRPC-430CassetteUnit.jpg

[retrokeeper]

No Scorpion,I don't have a brochure for that new of a deck,my lit is from their "better" days...back in the mid 80's to early 90's.That photo of a newer unit I'm not familiar with,and I have not been keeping up with the line since getting out of the business in 1996.I just remember what they use to be like,and have fond memories of their "city" named casseivers/car decks.The unit pictured looks sort of "generic & sterile" to me now,nothing like their euro-styling back in the days. Rob

[Scorpion8]

Yea, it's not my favorite. It came in a boat I bought circa 1998 and I pulled it out to hold onto when I sold the boat. I also prefer all the Euro-styled "city" series and there are some nice units in that lineup. How were their tuners comparatively?

[retrokeeper]

Their tuners were good...not to the order of the Pioneer Supertuner's but not far behind.I sure miss the good ole days of car stereo. Rob

[Scorpion8]

I sure miss the good ole days of car stereo.

Don't we all! So many of today's vehicles with those specialized units .... I don't know how you'd ever go after-market on some of those. And perhaps that's the reasoning of tieing the ventilation controls and blue-tooth phone and nav system into one do-it-all-and-nothing-well unit.

[Larry N]

The only thing I know about them is they have been installed in VWs for a long time. I've had a couple old ones that came out of busses that were 45 years old that still played great and had awesome sound. These radios are pretty pricey, but you get what you pay for. Heres are site for them with some background. http://www.blaupunkt.com/uk/company_1.asp

BTW I was talking Blaupunkt 8 track players in the busses.

[hakka26]

I have a Blaupunkt that I bought around 1990. It's a pull out unit. Sounds fine to me. Sold the car kept the Blaupunkt. Still going.

[close652]

I also have a Blaupunkt in my VW *check*

[Scorpion8]

I also have a Blaupunkt in my VW *check*

Which model, and how do you like it?

[close652]

It is a 1994 VW Vento 1.4 (= 3rd gen. Jetta for the US market)
I like it, however I bought it two months ago.

Oh, you mean the stereo? :)

It is a Blaupunkt Boston CC20.
I listened it for 10 minutes only. My friend removed it to see how it looked and when he reinserted it, it required a code. I called the previous owner, because I could not find it in the manuals he gave me. He could not tell me :( Now either I buy a new one (CD or memory card) or accept one of my friends' used tape deck for free.

[TheReeler]

Are you sure the Vento is the same as Jetta?... I've seen here both *eyepop* but never realized that were the same.

Occurs the same that with Mitsubishi Pajero and Mitsubishi Montero?.

[close652]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Jetta

For the 3rd generation Jetta, the Jetta name was dropped, and it was officially named the Volkswagen Vento in Germany, and all other European countries. ... Because of the success of the second generation in North America, VW decided to keep the Jetta nameplate. However, in Europe the car was given its new name to appeal to a younger market.

4th gen. Jetta = Bora
5th gen. Jetta = Jetta everywhere :)

It was bad marketing IMHO that they kept changing the name in Europe.

[TheReeler]

Thanks for the link. I see that the Mitsubishi is the same model also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pajero

[stripedcat99]

I have a Blau "Dallas" which is one of the stalk mounted control types they built for a time. The tuner/preamp/4 channel amp is in a module to be mounted remote, while the stalk and the control head, which is removable, is put somewhere close to the driver seat. The SQM88 cassette deck plugs into the main box, as does any other aux device you might have had. The cassette unit has an output equivalent to preamp out that any other deck would have, and in fact can plug directly into a power amp, since it has a volume control/balance/etc of its own.

I used this in a car for about 6 months, and then took it out when I sold the car. It has remained in my collection of "stuff" since then, and gets exercised from time to time on the bench. I'm thinking it will go in a boat sometime in the future. The cassette deck is the real interesting part for me, since they arent easy to find for cars as a standalone unit.

Oh, the other thing was that the AM tuner had AM stereo capability. One of a few that did. The power amp was only 20w/channel x 4, but had preamp out jacks for that monster amp you just had to have down the line....

For some reason, I am thinking that either Porsche or another Euro import used a Blaupunkt stalk standard in some models, but I dont think it was this model...could be mistaken on that, though.

[390FE]

I never cared for or liked the Blaupunkt gear.

But here is some interesting info on AM Stereo. And actually hearing an AM station in Stereo is down right cool & sounds GREAT!!! Once you hear it you will feel like you were robbed with all these years of MONO AM.*fit*

As far as AM Stereo goes check out this site http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kevtronics/

http://users.hfx.eastlink.ca/~amstereo/amsradiolist.htm

Look through the site because they list & show pics of several Car & Home Stereos that had AM Stereo tuners.

stripedcat99 they even show a stalk Blau like the one you have.

These links should take you to a list of AM Stereo Stations http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kevtronics/usa.htm

http://users.hfx.eastlink.ca/~amstereo/amsstations.htm

It's a bummer that the # of AM Stereo stations is shrinking. *crying*

Let me know what ya think?