I truly had no intentions on changing anything but then I gave in to my year long desire to own one of my favorite old school headunits when the opportunity arose. After unloading a lot of stuff, I went for it.
Alpine 7909j. "J" for Juba... or Japan. This was alpine's top of the line headunit from waaaaaay back in the day. Fully restored by a fellow highly respected in the collector community for all his work. It is upgraded with elna silmic caps. FM tuner was Japanese replaced with US tuner. Audio board got upgraded opamps. Laser realigned and DC converter rebuilt. This is better than original factory quality. It plays CD-R with a quickness and also has a BT/iPhone mod so I can still use it with my phone to listen to music and make phone calls.
I expected at best a lateral step in Sound Quality from the Sony but I was pleasantly surprised to find that it actually performs better than the Sony in a few notable areas: the soundstage is larger, bass is fuller, and the midrange tonality is more detailed. One key example is "Magic" by the cars when there's a "click clock" Sound made by the singer that pans to the far left. I've heard this song numerous times and when I put the alpine in and listened I immediately noticed the sound was a good 6" outside the point it used to be. I listened to "Grandma's Hands" from the Chesky disc and the *snap* is the most realistic it's ever sounded in my car. I can literally hear the pressure of the hard snap, as if it were reaching the dynamic range of the mic with the hard flesh sound of the snap then carrying throughout the room as it reverberates. Never sounded so lifelike.
I chose to not use the Mc meters since they didn't look right at all with the headunit.
Just wanted to share my excitement and some pictures with my buds here.