Newbie Here! Shaker 500 Questions For The Beginning Of My Venture

[bootlegger]

Good morning all!
I have a 05 stang that has aftermarket stereo but has the rest of the shaker 500 system. I have a kenwood ddx792 double den i am going to install. my ? is thoughts on leaving the rest of the shaker or should i reolace everything? I have already read about the 12v to 5 volts of the shaker amp. I am just curious if anyone has kept the shaker 500 and changed just the head unit? Were you happy with it?

 

[bootlegger]

Also I am curious about a antenna? Do they have a retractable one i can use or whats the best scenario for that?

 

[Davedacarpainter]

Hey brother, welcome to Stangnet!

Nice car btw, let me move you over to the '05-'14 tech section where you can get some answers.

Snoop around the general talk and tech subforums there to see what the guys and gals are doing to there S197's.

 

[LiquidStangs]

When we got my wife's '05 GT convertible, the Shaker 500 head unit was toast. There was a CD stuck in it, and it would actually wake up and attempt to eject the CD constantly, even when the car was off.

We replaced it with a double-DIN Kenwood head unit (not the same as yours, as far as I can tell), and had it professionally installed. We bought the 5V adapter, but for some reason the installer couldn't get it to work right with the adapter, so he left it off. It's still sitting right next to me on my desk.

We didn't replace anything else. The new head unit works fine, and sounds great. (Well, the display is hard to read in direct sunlight, but that's not the fault of the remaining Shaker parts.)

No idea on the antenna; we kept our stock one. If it matters, we confirmed that the antenna actually makes a difference; we removed it at one point, forgot to put it back, and my wife complained about the sudden terrible radio reception she was getting.