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<blockquote data-quote="Prowler573" data-source="post: 1661296" data-attributes="member: 561023">As much as it pains me to steer someone away from a Kenwood eXcelon deck out of the two HUs you have listed I would suggest you give a very wide berth to the Kenwood and eliminate it from consideration immediately.One of the main things that caused Kenwood to have a rather widespread reputation for building crap was the use of the D-Mask+ stealth faceplate mechanism. It was a flawed design that saw more than a few owners becoming extremely disappointed with their audio purchase when the ribbon cables that connected the faceplate to the deck&#039;s internals malfunctioned rendering the unit useless more often than not.It didn&#039;t take too long and enough complaints from consumers saw the discontinuation of this poor design.For some odd reason Kenwood saw fit to bring it back on one deck only in the &#039;05 lineup ~ the KDC-X689. History shows that this particular design isn&#039;t reliable and the odds are in favor of it malfunctioning providing you with aggravating downtime getting it serviced under warranty, or if you choose to buy it from an unauthorized source, leaving you with an inoperable deck.For no other reason than the faceplate design I have to say avoid the X689 like the plague. //content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Prowler573, post: 1661296, member: 561023"] As much as it pains me to steer someone away from a Kenwood e[COLOR=Red]X[/COLOR]celon deck out of the two HUs you have listed I would suggest you give a very wide berth to the Kenwood and eliminate it from consideration immediately. One of the main things that caused Kenwood to have a rather widespread reputation for building [I]crap[/I] was the use of the D-Mask+ stealth faceplate mechanism. It was a flawed design that saw more than a few owners becoming extremely disappointed with their audio purchase when the ribbon cables that connected the faceplate to the deck's internals malfunctioned rendering the unit useless more often than not. It didn't take too long and enough complaints from consumers saw the discontinuation of this poor design. For some odd reason Kenwood saw fit to bring it back on one deck only in the '05 lineup ~ the KDC-X689. History shows that this particular design isn't reliable and the odds are in favor of it malfunctioning providing you with aggravating downtime getting it serviced under warranty, or if you choose to buy it from an unauthorized source, leaving you with an inoperable deck. For no other reason than the faceplate design I have to say avoid the X689 like the plague. [IMG]//content.invisioncic.com/y282845/emoticons/frown.gif.a3531fa0534503350665a1e957861287.gif[/IMG] [/QUOTE]

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