I have a couple of questions:

Can anyone recommend a brand of in-dash CD receivers that won't look completely out of place with all of the red lights on the dash of my 1997 A6?

Does Crutchfield supply you with any instruction and parts to make an installation pretty straightforward?

Assuming the lighting in an A6 is exactly like an A4....

1. Kenwood eXcelon matches dead on. It's as if the head unit was made for the A4. However there is also blue in the display. All the buttons are red, but the display is blue... but trust me when I say it does not look at all out of place. It really contrasts well with the red.... especially at night. If you get the higher end KDC-X815 or 915... they have a really nice fine pitch high resolution dot matrix display. (and yes I have this in my car). Note, if you are only doing a head unit and not an amp, then stay away from the 915... it has no internal amp

2. Blaupunkt Nevada. I've seen it in a display board and it looks like it's pretty much a dead ringer as well. This one has a much simpler face plate and no blue... just red. However, take this with a grain of salt.... but I've heard others say the sound quality on the blau is less than great. I guess that's something you need to find out on your own. One thing I saw that looked pretty cool though, is that it has a nifty security system... you have to use a coded credit card to activate the head unit after power is cut.

3. Sony Xplod. This is pretty close, but if you look closely, the shade of red leans just a tad towards the orange/amber side... so it's not as intense of a red, and doesn't match quite as closely as the Kenwood or Blau.

Anything else is going to be either amber, which looks gross, or green. And then there's the Panasonic stuff, which has that organic display that matches absolutely nothing.

you paint the led's... right?


someone here did it... but the only thing is you could void warranty on the radio if you open up.. so that's a risk you have to decide if it's worth it.