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Personally, I'd look for a used or salvaged head unit. You'd have to make sure it was properly divorced from the previous car, though, and you'd have to get your dealer to divorce your old head unit and marry the new one to the car. The advantage is that you'd keep the look of the dashboard intact, you'd keep your steering wheel controls, and installation time would be minimal.
If you get a separate head unit, you may as well get one that has some nice features to make up for what you're losing...see what's available. Installation should not be as tough as the circuit city people made you think.
1) The separate amp powers only the door speakers. The dash speakers and rear speakers are powered by the head unit. They end in a plug that plugs into the factory head unit. Get the wiring harness from Taliaferro when you order the rest of the kit, and you'll be able to attach the current plug to your new head unit. To power the door speakers, they should use the pre-out from the new head unit to run to the amp. They can splice the pre-out into the existing cable that runs from the head unit to the amp. Show them the pin-out from Richard's site (link below, see "fitting hints" page) so they know which wires are which.
2) Your dash speakers may be 8-ohm; the rest are all 4-ohm. You can take them out and look at what's printed on the bottom (again, see Richard's site for instructions). They're standard-size 3.5" speakers, so replacing them will be easy and cheap if you need to / want to.
3) Get the European radio kit. The only difference between the base and SE stereos is the presence of the extra amp and door speakers in the SE, so the mounting kit has nothing to do with it.
Matt
'99 base
posted by 12.101.2...
Richard Bevan's Saab 900/9-3 Audio Guide
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