CASPER The Friendly Bass

When you run one of the top e-retailing sites in all ICE and you also have a showroom and stock that is the envy of the whole bricks and mortar trade, you end up with clout. Thus, when Car Audio & Security in Hayes near the airport at Heathrow, run SPL competitions on sale days, they get a big showing. They also have the muscle to swag stuff to give to the winners as prizes and on their high summer weekend events, can summon demo cars from all the top brands.
For those who really want to get up close and personal with these cars, these are the days to get to CAS and hang out long enough ’till you get a listen. The sort of difference is like between going to a Formula One meeting and going to Goodwood. Formula One’s all very exciting and major but the smaller event feels all aristocratic and you can get closer to the stuff that excites you.
So this last time out, we had the entirety of the massive Vibe rig crammed up the end of the capacious CAS car park and the nutter DJ Cutloose was spinning real vinyl tunes fatter than gluttony through the huge Bass Tunnel array of forty Vibe Space fifteens. I even got inside the rig and did a badass video with the Vibe chief techno-nutter Rob Gurney who built the room-with-no-windows inside. It houses a big old air conditioner just for the huge bank of Vibe amps, all supplied with 12V by the biggest set of bus bars I have ever seen in my life!
The whole fleet of Vibe demo cars for all the Midbass brands were there in front of the rig and inside in the showroom itself, there’s the BlackDeath Coffin enclosure demo (press the detonate button and the whole shop goes BRRRRRRRRR!) as well as the lovely Kenwood Scirocco demo car centre stage. And out round the back was the JBL Easy-Up canopy and an AudioControl SA-3055 RTA/SPL meter with high pressure SPL conversion on a table and a big old mega-LED display so you can see what’s up if you are in the crowd.
That and a radio microphone on a bit of PA stolen from DJ Cutloose’s rig (well, they had the ruddy truck to rock through) and I was in up-in-yer-grille compere heaven. I was asking ’em all how many watts and into what woofers and giving them grief under pressure as it always makes it more fun for us lot watching. I ain’t as cruel as the weep-mongering producers of X Factor, but I do understand the urge to get a bit of emotion visible and flowing.
The cars were divided into three classes and an Uber class for the ones I dubbed the Bass Lords after Sam Watt of Armour’s labelling of Ian Iceman Pinder as “The Lord of the Lows” on the cards she had made up for him! Thing is, you wouldn’t want to be going up against Mark Smith or Ian, even if your car was walled but you would want to see them fight it out like they meant it! And indeed we did, When it got to Bass Lord time, Ian was down an amp and got a low score. Mark hit 155.1dB and Ian came back with a tweak, a test and a 155.4dB – all at below 30Hz! The classes were shamelessly intended to encourage the entrants to get ever yet more involved.

This time out, the format gained a name. “Car Audio & Security’s very own user-friendly competition to find out who’s cars have the baddest bass: CASPER – Car Audio Security Pressure Extreme Run”
And this is the preamble entrants got…
You’ll be up against nutters just like you, however badly you have got the bass bug. If your bass is from one subwoofer then you’ll only go against other single subwoofer installs in the Bass Hungry class, because you like music that’s food for woofers.
If your bass urge has started to take over, then you’re in Bass Head class and have more than one woofer. Maybe even lost your luggage space altogether! But you still have the same number of seats the car came with…..
If your ride has started to be more about the bass than anything else and you really got it bad, enough for all your mates to know you are a bit gone in the head, then it’s because you are a Bass Addict. You will be up against others afflicted with the dread but kept safe from the sheer stupidity of going up against the criminally insane.
The last is for those who barely need introduction. Acoustic Weapons smiths. The hardest of the hardcore, the ASBO-deserving, unabashed, complete low frequency psychotics. These do not apply for status, it is solely awarded to true Bass Lords.


For the runner up in each class there was a set of the Vibe QB69 square 6×9’s – the ones with the ten inch woofer motors on them – and for the winner there was either a twelve inch in a box, or a fifteen inch woofer, either a Space or a mighty Black Death and lastly a big old Vibe monoblock bass amplifier. In all at retail, it was nearly two grand’s worth of prizes.
It was a golden warm weekend up near Heathrow as well as down south at the Celsus Top Gun event and both were huge successes.
The last event of the year looks likely to be the Streetbassers’ Propper Droppers day to be held at CAS on the 24th October. I’ll be there then, as well.
Here’s some images, slideshow style……
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