In the last couple of months my empeg has begun doing something unusual and I'm not sure where to even begin tracking down the problem.

If I shut off the car for a brief period of time (30 minutes or less, I think) when I restart the car the empeg stays dead until I pull it out of the sled and re-insert it. If the car is parked for a long period of time (overnight) the empeg fires right up when the car starts.

The empeg does not fail to start after a short duration hiatus every time, but probably about 60% of the time. It always starts right up after a long-duration hiatus.

Standby time is set to 60 seconds.

All other aspects of operation seem nominal.

tanstaafl.

Including its home/car sensing?

As I recall, you daisy chain the empeg through another stereo before it goes to your amps, so you'd tend to have it set at full volume at all time and thus wouldn't necessarily notice right away if it was having the car/home sensing problem.

Home/Car sensing is working -- no fader available when plugged into the AC adapter, fader is available in the car.

The player isn't daisy-chained; I run it through a Sony switching relay so that if both CD player and empeg are turned on, the empeg gets priority; if the empeg is out of the car or in standby or turned off, then the CD player can operate.

When the empeg fails to start on car restart, it remains totally dead -- no display, no flashing blue standby light, nothing. Pull it out of the sled an inch and reseat it and it works normally.

tanstaafl.

Of course, this is January... In Alaska...

Just sayin'.