I already know that most posters / responders in this forum love their Alpine HU's! I do too but.... I'm wrestling wth getting the Eclipse 3413 HU instead of the the Alpine 9513or 15. What's this forums opinion on the Eclipse HU's and in particular this supposedly lower end 3413 unit?

The rest of the system would be:
JL XR650-csi components in the door
JL Stealth box
JL Audio 300/4 amp driving the fronts and sub
Lucid rears (existing) driven off the HU

My main problem with the Alpine is this buttons / knobs feel cheap (my opinion of course)

 

i have an eclipse cd-5423 and i like it alot and its a great unit, i may be selling it soon though in order to get a nakamichi cd-400. the nakamichi looks stock and i like that, and u cant go wrong w/ a cd player that has a 24 bit d/a converter.

 

Reliability used to be an Issue for Eclipse I am not sure if it still is.

 

I've had the same eclipse HU in my integra for the past 5 years and have had no problems with it. I've thought about replacing it for a newer model, but it works and sounds great so there's never been a reason to. My bro has an eclipse HU also and has been very pleased with it in the two years he has owned it. I'm kinda partial to the eclipse products personally and will probably buy an eclipse HU for my s2k if I decide to upgrade the stock unit. But Alpine seems to make really nice stuff as well, so I don't think you can go wrong either way.

 

Thanks for the input!

After comparing HU specs and features I'm going with the Alpine 9815.

The thing that pushed me over the edge was the dash interface and the fact that I had to settle for the lower model to get mp3 playback