gdgt

Upon getting a car with no AUX input and a broken cassette deck, I needed some way to use my Zune 120 on the road. Enter the Zune Car Pack v2.

Normally I research a product before purchasing. However, after the excellence of every other Zune product, I purchased this as an impulse buy. After opening the package and exploring the product, I was highly impressed. There are many little details which make this FM transmitter amazing: the friction dashboard holder pad, the magnetic storage/attachment of the unit, autoseek, etc. Once I started using it, my hopes of quality audio were shattered. Even on the clearest station, there was a constant static/fuzziness to the sound. After doing some research online, I realized that everyone who purchased this product has this problem. I also discovered that pretty much FM transmitter out there has this issue. Apparently, to get the Car Pack approved by the FCC, Microsoft had to weaken the transmitter strength to an essentially unuseable level.

As the design of the product is just amazing, I was determined to find a workaround. I busted open the control pod and started mucking around. After finding the antenna location on the circuit board, I attached a metre-long section of speaker cable and reassembled the unit.

The results were astounding. Where I couldn't find a single clear station before, the unit will now overpower even the strongest local signals, giving me clear music on any station.


I have some pictures of the process, but I won't be compiling them into a document if absolutely nobody will use them.

If anybody wants instructions, I can post a link to a .pdf of the steps, and I'll help anyone who needs it if someone else decides to try this process.