Philip: The Dolby unit gets used on occasion. I really bought it only because I've got a number of Columbia Q8's that are Dolby encoded and I wanted to see if it made any difference and I can report that yes, on some tapes it makes a BIG difference in the amount of tape hiss while not eating away too harshly at the high-end audio spectrum. Other times I use it to just try and dull the effects of a poorly reproduced RCA cartridge. I've noticed they are some of the worst for tape hiss - worse than GRT Corp. tapes in some instances. Then again, this could be directly related to the amount of mileage on the tape.
Jon: I had actually earmarked the 999 to be installed in my blue 6-cylinder AMC Hornet hatchback, unfortunately while the tape face fits the radio bezel almost too perfectly, the chassis of the player is about a half inch too tall! It's got to squeeze into an area that has a metal bracket above and below the radio opening and there's nothing I can remove to make any room
I had even customized mine (notice the yellow wire on top of the unit) to include a green LED that illuminates the radio dial. Green also being the light of choice for AMC gauges. It would have matched perfectly!! I still can't understand why Panasonic would choose not to have ANY dial illumination. It struck me as really odd. This player probably retailed for $200+ when new. No dial light? I'd have been pissed!
Here are the decks I mentioned.
