600 Carats of Diamonds

Paul Richardson is a hero and we all need our heroes. In a world with an awful lot of people claiming to be as good as the game, Paul truly is the Thomas Chippendale of his generation. The single best craftsman installer in all of the UK’s mobile electronics scene. (As against oiled of torso and a bit sexy.)
The CAI Open Day 24/8/07
I was lucky enough to have known Paul from before he joined the guys at InCar in Acton way back in the day.

We are from the same side of town and I met him at Prestige when Bob, Baz & Gordon (of BBG fame) were just a small shop in Rayners Lane. (I always thought it was cool to have a district of London named after one’s surname. A bit like Smithfield.) I had been busy at InCar busy selling Earthquake of San Francisco for their side business of distribution and Paul was an installer. Together with American star Alberto Lopez, he built a seminal install called Son Of Seismic in a big black shiny van. I got to name it after Seismic, which was the very first ever British 150dB install. It had 24 Cast Pro Dual Spider fifteen inch woofers in a huge dual vee of subs in the back of a massive Dodge Ram day van. It’s aircon was so powerful coming from California that I got hypothermia driving it to Birmingham one sunny day and felt sick all afternoon. It was not only the loudest vehicle system in the UK, (153.4dB) with huge Plexiglas waveguides and stuff, but it also, at the touch of a button became the best sounding vehicle in the UK. So, like only Mark ‘F#ck Off Kid’ Fukuda* in the USA, it won both loudness and purity contests at the top level in its year. These days, no one vehicle could do that and so Fukuda and Richardson are carved as legends in the hall of fame.
I was lucky enough to be treated as family by the lads at InCar and they let me swag weeks of Paul’s time and for a while I had a Paul Richardson install.

His work is characterised by a smoothness of shape and form that only a sculptor with poetry in his soul could achieve. The taut snugness of fit of leather and panel-edge is so good that you cannot help running your hands over the curves he fashions in his installs. His work is tactile (lovely to feel up!) and always beautifully designed both electronically and acoustically. He has won a cabinet full of awards at competitions down the years but the top gongs are his Installer of the year Awards. A second for last year behind Phil Leach of SQ+ in Manchester and a First for this year. He’s the best and can prove it, not that his ego would be that vigorous. He lets his craftsmanship and art do the talking.
If you go and get your car installed by CAI you are joining an exclusive club of those with the very best taste in In Car Electronics. He only deals in excellent stuff (he likes Orion, DLS, Diamond, Rockford-Fosgate, that kinda level of kit) but is happily able to do the simple fits too, as bread and butter. The Carnoisseur shop is nearby to his Markyate location, in Dunstable and they use him as their local fitter! I think they do know what a gem they have got, though, to be fair. It’s like having Fortnum & Mason’s as your local supermarket.
Cost is about time as well as hardware and by no means all the cars that showed up for his open day in August were only users of the most expensive kit.

He’ll fit what you want, just better than most everybody else, is all. There was a car there with a full-on Pioneer Accelerate install that would have been lower cost than most for the hardware, although he had some lovely Richardson panels in his car.
I went along and was literally blown away. Ian ‘Iceman’ Pinder was there with his mad Orion Astra van, as was the Kicker Hummer (which averaged 7mpg en route, we understand) and of course the lovely Pioneer demo cars that Paul installed for Pioneer directly. I did tell Pioneer’s executive types about him and they asked him to make a proposal. He nearly didn’t get the gig as some other outfit’s suggestion was more outrageous at first. So, realising he could really go for it, he submitted a nutty concept and the demo vehicle was his. It has a second head unit hidden, with a phat bass tone CD in it playing a repeat of a note that destroys. You sit in the little sculpted hot perch and press the button for as long as you can handle it while a Pioneer weapons grade woofer tries to de-bone you.
What got me was the ‘Diamonds in Bulk’ effect. Imagine seeing eight five-carat solitaires in a cabinet. There were cars in a row, all with awesome Richardson installs. The overall effect kicks your teeth in. better than any car show for electronics I’ve ever been to, as they were all bloody brilliant.

They ran a raffle, giving an Orion HCCA 12 away as top prize, with Pioneer speakers to swag and an Alpine prize, too and branded the lads up with pukka embroidered tees. I had a wander and took some snaps of the lucky lads and their cars and harangued them briefly through the PA system as Paul had me do the prize giving, which I love. I even got to wear my old Pith helmet in the sunshine!
The event was a huge success and marks the end of the beginning for Paul in his new self-governed world. Talk Audio wishes him and his lovely family all success for the future. I reckon it’s so bright they’ll all have to wear shades.
 

EDIT New Business: now
A1 Audio Designs, Unit f), Pixmore Industrial Estate, Pixmore Avenue, Letchworth, SG6 1JJ

Telephone 01462 681118 see link
 
*Rumour has it that when a certain SPL enthusiast travelled with his Mom across a couple of States to see this man, his hero, this is what he allegedly said. His mama, a Millionaire called Alma Gates became more into it than her son and she was the first 170dB install creator, along with the president of Precision Power and the USA National Physics Laboratory, who tried to kill boll weevils in wheat by shouting at them at 170dB in an attempt to find a ‘green’ method of sterilising wheat.