Ever since I made typo in my original ICE thread, the 7998 was haunting me. Was trawling ebay and found one for 300$. Given that my BIL coming this month , I bought it - what the heck..
Managed to get to my installer today in pouring rain, connected the HU. If the earlier setup was joy, this was pure ecstasy. Even FM sounds better
Moments later, hit a snag. The phantom face was acting up. Refusing to move. On investigation found that there were bits of thermocol (the stuff that the sellere packed it in) had scraped through the mounting holes and was jamming up the slider mechanism. Thank god that my installer is an authorised Alpine service guy. So he is currently cleaning it up and regreasing.
More tomorrow when I get it running full throttle.