[Euro] Static noise from stereo

[Saxphile]

Hi,

This is a problem since I bought my 2003 Accord Euro, and I've never been able to find a solution. I stumbled upon this site, and hopefully someone here knowledgible would be able to help me out.

There's a static noise in the stereo. You don't usually notice it, but if one turns the volume down to zero and then to one, it's quite noticeable. Even though the noise doesn't get much louder as you turn the volume up, it is still very annoy when you listen to quiet music (e.g. piano sonatas or string quartets). I found this problem the day I bought the car, and went straight back to dealer. We tested all the Accord Euros they had at the time, and they all had this noise. So the service manager agreed to talk to Honda NZ about this issue, and almost a year later the answer came from Japan - It was deemed a "feature" of the car.

Desperate, I asked the dealer to try and do something about it, even if I have to pay to fix it (I was hoping it was a grounding issue). They took it to a car stereo guy they know, and he couldn't find any remedy, or even what the problem is. So I resorted to listening to only pop/rock music in my car for the past 3 years.

Last month I took my car in for a service, and they gave me a '06 Accord Euro as courtesy car. To my amazement, there's no noise from the stereo! I went back to the dealer all excited, hoping I could simply get whatever they changed for the '06 model for my car. However, the service manager told me that the head unit in the '06 model is a completely different unit (I assume that meant a different part number), despite the fact that it looks exactly the same as the one in my car.

So here I am back to square one. But now that I've heard the stereo without the noise, I just couldn't get it out of my head. Has anyone here experienced this issue or even have a fix for it? Any comment would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!