Project Big Black to Take on Planet

Regular readers will recall Talk Audio Magazine covering the World Finals of the Bassrace contest format being held in Italy and how our own Matt ‘˜thejoose’ Sprigg and his good lady Lou are going to take on the world. If you missed it, it’s here:
link
Point is, it’s a fierce long way and they needed some guidance, so I made another call to those munificent folks at Kenwood and top honch say ‘˜YES!’ to loan of a magical pan-European navigation add-on to the double-DIN Kenwood KDC-DDX5026 that Matt was presented with at the Mobile Electronics News Expo last year – to this very week. It is the KNA-G620T and seen here snapped with Matt and his impressive trophy haul.
To give full credit to Matt and to his sponsors Ground Zero and Kenwood, you have to admire what has been achieved in the year since. He has backed up my faith admirably. As an Ice Svengali, it isn’t power you wield to get folks stuff as sponsored equipment (And so help me, I have thieved an utterly unequalled amount of ICE from all sorts of makers over the years. I probably beat actual criminals in career terms!) so much as putting your reputation on the line as judge of both skill and of character. They have to deliver or its my fault for the bum steer and you need to be one tough and clever motivated person to achieve at Matt’s level.
That the Ground Zero product is as able, rugged and plain bloody frighteningly loud as the best out there is now firmly established and there is a movement afoot, with a few GZ installs in the pipeline. But the other side of the story has to be the Kenwood. I know that Ian Pinder has managed to smash the hell out of the CD mech in his sponsored Kenwood headunit as he is an All Day Sucker of a Bass Lollipop, whereas Matt tends to wait like a gently cruising shark and then bite their asses on the lanes. But the KDC-DDX5026 has won Matt a LOT of Bassraces.
This means that despite the sheer beating it is getting, the headunit’s digital volume controller rotary The Knob is an item of total precision and great resolution. It has tiny notches to make it feel like a ‘˜real’ analogue potentiometer of the type not seen in car audio in a generation and pretty much only on current sale as the PAC-1. (Reviewed here: link and will make you competitive in Bassrace with any old headunit) So, without customisation with an extra knob on your dash and keeping the control position ergonomic, the Kenwood head unit turns out to be a brilliant tool for the delicate balance of twiddling the volume for bracket-style bass racing. The details of how it all works are all in the story linked at the top.
But if you have read thus far yet can’t be bothered to go read the whole of the other story, the essence is…
There are four simultaneous World Finals locations: Daytona Beach, in Florida where this is part if the legendary Spring Break Nationals sound off. Dayton, Ohio and Serra Negra in Sao Paulo as well as Montichiari and all get hooked up via the internet to fight the finals.
The Italian winner will be crowned European champion and then immediately go up against the cars at the other three locations, live on the internet it’s just like they have really, really long microphone leads and are in adjacent lanes.
Four locations, four final-final cars, two rounds and a Global winner!
And we in the UK will be rooting for Matt and his lass, one, that PBB makes it over the Alps without overheating and two, that he returns with glory! I shall dare hope and believecan you imagine if we had a World Champion in the UK?
Good luck Matt, at least you won’t get lost in Transylvania on the way. We’re rootin’ for you!
Also, we are going to try to run a Video Diary covering the trip via Talk Audio TV on the front page, so keep looking in at the wee video window to your right, for developments.