Well luckily while debating whether spending £2900 on a mountain bike is a waste of money, I turned my attention back to the blaupunkt to see if there were any better deals out there.
Luckily enough the 5 channel was available on ebay 4 months old with the BMW cables which as luck would have it were also the cables for the golf. All in i got it for £180. Nice saving on the best price of £310 new.
Couldn't wait for delivery and as I'm on holiday i decided to go on a 170 mile round trip and collect it.
First thing that struck me was how many cables were running through the harness. Its huge and I now understand why they are asking £68 for it. The amp is also a nice size and has loads of inputs/outputs and loads of adjustability.
Installing it was very straight forward, I've taken the head unit out 3 times now so its turned into a 5 minute job. Plugging it in was easy as each cable could only fit in one place making it impossible to mess up. The most difficult bit was getting the cables from the centre of the dash, across and behind the glovebox and down the side of the car to the boot. Taking the trim off the side of the car was actually really easy as its all just clipped in and there is plenty of space behind it for the cables to hide away.
Once the cables were in the boot, I plugged the amp in and switched the stereo on. WOW, what a difference. I had no idea these speakers could sound so good. I'm still tweaking with the setting on the amp to get the bass and treble right but the difference is night and day. Real nice bass and lots of sound that never existed in the songs when played before. Radio is a massive improvement, it was so tinny before and now actually has real cd sound.
I'm not sure whether to add and sub now as its probably as good as i need it to be and I'm not sure what a sub would add?? I'm hopefully gonna test a friends sub to see how good it is.
All in all, a fantastic buy which has really finished off my setup
I can post some pics of the unit if anyone is interested. I've mounted it on the back of the rear seats in the boot.