did a thing this weekend, finished up today with a new kit (metra sucked, bad fit - this one is american international, fits much better and paint is a nicer finish). i'm debating on whether to try to paint it flat black to match the rest of the trim, nissan changed these to flat back instead of gloss black in 2016 but none of the dash kits were updated. it doesn't look too bad now and i suspect if i try to match it, i will end up needing to repaint the a/c control trim & the U trim around the whole stack on the top part where it goes from silver to black, else i'll have a mismatch...
alpine ilx-107! i was debating between this and the sony xav-ax5000, i ultimately knew i wanted the alpine since it does wireless carplay but was having a hard time justifying the price difference ($700 vs $350 for the sony) - the day i went on crutchfield to order, they had the alpine available as a scratch & dent for $500 so i ordered it up. as far as i can tell the thing is brand new, there's no scratches or dents on the unit itself or on the packaging and everything was packaged/sealed like it came straight from the factory. functionally i really like it so far, the screen is nice and bright, and capacitive touch is so
mcdvoice much better than the resistive screen on the pioneer i had in my fit.
i need to retune, may get to that tomorrow. the factory head unit definitely did some weird things to the sound, not just to the response curve but i also found when plugging this in that the left side was now much louder than the right side...kind of strange. i was always lacking a bit of midbass previously which i suspected was from the head unit and can confirm that was the case now, so that's nice.
next step is likely going to be changing the subs, may be another month or two before i order them. debating on what to get but i'm thinking either a pair of dayton ultimax 15's to run ib, or maybe an audiofrog gb12 ported...