Jensen AWM960 in our X139 Fun Finder

139XFRONTIER · 04-05-2011, 11:54 AM

We've had our 2009 Fun Finder for about a year. We've made three trips in it so far - two to Tennessee and one to Texas. The Jensen radio/am/fm/cd/dvd/mp3 player has been used about 4 times for the radio and once for a cd. Well, we took it out of storage for our trip to Tennessee a couple of weeks ago and we could not get the unit to turn on to set the clock (it wouldn't do anything at all). So....I decided to put a cd in it and loe and behold it played the cd and played the cd and played the cd but would not eject it no matter what we did. My husband unplugged the battery and unhooked the power at the campsite just to get the thing to stop playing!

We were in Pigeon Forge, TN at the time and took it to a techie guy who said he would try to fix it. Well, he couldn't, although he did get the cd out. He said the cd/dvd driver was shot. OK, so why won't anything else work? So at the moment we are trying to decide whether to order a Jensen replacement $320 - YIKES, or replace it with something different (i,e, just an am/fm radio, or perhaps all separate things, or install an other brand of radio/am/fm/cd/dvd/mp3 player). Has anyone else had issues with the Jensen?

Thanks for any help or suggestions you may give.

webslave · 04-05-2011, 03:54 PM

The DVD player in my '08 bit the dust last year. We bought a Sony stand-alone unit and have that piped directly to the television. To be honest, I don't put any "stock" in Jensen products...I've never had one in my 59 years that worked for more than a year. In years gone by, if I was trading in a car, I would take my Pioneer radio out and install a Jensen, then install my Pioneer in my new car (that was in the early years when car companies put lousy radios in most of their cars

)

To be fair, Jensen makes a lot of receivers for everything from cars to boats to RVs and home entertainment. My personal experience has been that they aren't worth the space they take up, but, obviously, they must make some units that are good as they've been in business for as long as I can remember. Since your unit is still fairly new, you might contact Jensen to see if they will do anything to help you...

My personal action would be to replace the Jensen with an automotive double DIN or triple DIN unit from a major manufacturer; Pioneer, Sony, Alpine, etc. It won't be cheap, but, it will probably outlive your TT. Since the DVD player died in ours, we just don't use it. We have all of ours CD's ripped to MP3 and have our "tunes" on i-Pods and we use the Sony for playing DVDs. For the time being, the Aux input on the Jensen still works for plugging our iPods into, but, if that stops working, I've already got my eyes on a nice Pioneer unit...

139XFRONTIER · 04-06-2011, 10:34 AM

Don,

Thanks for your input. Pete and I are new to RVing and to electronics. When you talk about changing the Jensen AMW960 to something else, we don't know how to know which one to buy. It would need to fit in the space the Jensen takes up, and we don't know about all the connections. It would be so much more simple just to replace it with another Jensen AMW960 because we could just plug it in, but other people have also had issues with the Jensen. We are at a loss here. We do really appreciate the information from you all.

Thanks again,
Cathy and Pete

webslave · 04-06-2011, 02:09 PM

Sometimes the thought of changing something like that is much scarier than the actual doing...

Your DVD / Entertainment unit shares all the connectivity that a similar brand would have for the same functions. It will have power in, sound out for a minimum of one speaker group, most likely several speaker groups (inside, outside and a possible third that would be your choice or not used), antenna input, and video out. All the connections are reasonably standard and most new units come with a "How To" installation manual.

To find units that fit... The AWM960 has mounting hole dimensions of 9.3" across by 6.16" high (your hole is probably 9 1/4" wide by 6" high). A decent stereo shop can find replacements to fit that hole or you could contact a web oriented site like Crutchfield...

You may or may not have gotten the full Owner's Manual on your Jensen, if you didn't, you can download it here:

Jensen AWM960 Stereo/DVD Player

The manual gives you all the color codes for the various wires and what they go to...a new stereo would have the same type manual listing their wiring. Just match up the names

I understand, though, your reluctance. My father, rest his soul, was never certain which end of a screwdriver to hold and he always wondered where I got my mechanical ability from (he told me he suspected that the milkman may have been my father....

) Replacing the bad unit with another is defintely a lot easier; it will be plug and play. The only "unknown" or gamble is whether the new one will be better or worse than your existing unit

139XFRONTIER · 04-06-2011, 04:21 PM

So true.

My husband is very mechanical, he just isn't all that great with wiring, but he can do it with some instructions. I contacted Cruiser RV and they are getting us the AWM970 as a replacement at a good price. I sure hope this one doesn't "kick the bucket" like the other one did.

Thanks again.