I had MANY bad experiences with John, mind you he is very polight and yeses you to death on the phone.
I'm in the same boat with Alpine, parts were missing and were promised to be delivered.....some were.....some were not, even after going over a list repeatedly on what items they needed to send me. I notified John he still needed to send the other parts, "yes, I will get right on that"......two months later......nothing.
Another hole in there instructions and general knowledge to the customer is THERE IS NO CRUISE CONTROL BRACKET! Others here will tell you they have been waiting two years for this part, I was told I should have it in 2-3 weeks(a few times).....it's been 3 months.

Again, he is very nice on the phone and seems to egnolage(sp?) your fustration, but after the phone hangs up...see ya, I got your money, screw off.

I can only give Alpine a HUGE thumbs down and I will never buy or reconmend anyone to buy anything from them.

Tone has a good track record, but I don't know why Alpine would treat him any different than any of us(other than he sells their product). I mean, if I bought the SC from Tone could he get all the parts that were broken or missing any faster if I went straight to Alpine? And what about the criuse control bracket, if I went to Tone and asked about that, what would happen?.....the part does not exsist.

To give an example, my SC cone was leaking oil and needed to be replaced. I sent photos to John to show him the problem. From that point John sent my photos to the manufacture of the SC cone and waited for a reply from them to see what could/had to be done. The company sent Alpine another part and Alpine sent it to me.....witch took 3-4 weeks. So, if I bought it from Tone would anything be different?

I along with some other board members here have had bad expirences with Alpine and these problems need to be addressed to better prepare anyone before someone goes out and spends a nice chunck of change on the Alpine SC.