Smoke & Mirrors – The Highdown Coole Lowrider

Brad Coole definitely is.
An ice installer and system designer of major repute, he is in my top five of best all-time UK dream weavers in mobile electronics.
Also known as the Jack Dee of Car Audio, he generally wears a mien of some gravitas, concealing a beating heart of pure gold and a creative urge that has been evolving, like any true artist’s, down the years. Watching the True Greats of Car Audio’s skills and artistry grow and mature through time has been just lovely.

They are so few and all have got it so deep that they cannot but help work in the field, it’s in their blood. I mean the likes of Paul Richardson, Mark Turner, Ian Pinder and one or two others. (Mind you, there’s some serious deep talent out there right now, that’s young and coming up.)
And Brad Coole most definitely is.

I first met Brad through his Batman Vs Spiderman style tussles he had with Ian ‘˜Iceman’ Pinder in the bass contest lanes. Ian was the trophy-thief who suddenly found a serious slice of competition in Brad.
They always had different styles and didn’t always see eye to eye but these days, both are older and wiser. Brad’s whole family were involved in his sound off stuff and his folks always came along to the shows. As did a lad called Jay Bow, with both parents and his little sister in tow, who was an SQ hound. I did a feature about them all, with a Happy Families theme. ‘Mr & Mrs. Boom, with their Son Master Boom and Mr & Mrs Tweak with Little Miss Tweak and Young Master Tweak’
It was great fun and a good story and I have been proper mates with Brad ever since. Sadly, Jay Bow and his dad emigrated to Oz to leave the desperately sad memories of losing both mum/wife and sister/daughter in an old life as both died soon after that time.

Brad did spend some years out of the trade but last year came out of ‘˜retirement’ to build a very special Peugeot 107 for Cerebral Palsy suffer and total basshead Nathan Carey. Fully sponsored by Vibe, it was absurd. Now Brad has come back full time to work for the inspiringly enthusiastic and brilliantly talented Jeremy Owen. He set up for himself a while back after years in the trade and has built up a passionate following and a real community of top enthusiasts around his Highdown Car Audio and Security business in Worthing, Sussex.

So, when in an attack of deeply enlightened self-interest, ‘˜new’ employee Brad offered his own vehicle to be the company demo wagon, Jez agreed. Being a FOUR Masters dealer, they were given some seriously sexy lurve from the Hertz brand as the guys at FOUR are busily assembling a terrifyingly loud fleet of demo vehicles built by dealers and have an urge to cut a slice of the world with the brand.
FOUR’s aggressive marketing means system design heaven if you are a nutter like Brad.

The vehicle was once a simple Mazda B2000 pickup truck. It now has a seriously frightening V8 under the bonnet, a set of hydraulic suspension, (‘Bags are for Fags’ quoth Bradders) and a bed that has been cut through right into the cabin so as to allow a triangular bass port to squirt the output of four Hertz SX 380D fifteen inch beastly subwoofers right into the kidneys of the occupants.
The top of the bed can wear an Aluminium tonneau cover but when on display, the neatly trimmed flush surface houses the window to look through to see the subs in their low rider bed home and the eleven amps and Audison Bit 1 car audio processor that controls all the crossover functions and way more.
Each of the subs gets the output of two Hertz HDP1 monoblock bass amplifiers up it, one per voice coil. Four ‘˜D’ for Dual voice coil woofers, means eight coils, eight amps, eight sodding kilowatts on boom!

Down the central track of the bed, above the neat face of Bit 1, are three four channel Hertz HDP4 amplifiers. These are simply allocated to the speakers in the doors. Four SV200 8in speakers with pro-audio-style Linen edge surrounds live in each door, with two evil (and I mean Proper Dread!) bullet tweeters above them, called ST35. These bullets are NOT simple pro items in 8 Ohm with a damn sticker on them saying ‘Brand’, they are actual 4 Ohm Hertz designs and so are way beyond wickedly loud at 107dB efficient. And with low impedance to suck full wattage, this means evilly potent. Thus, four mids, plus four mids, plus four tweeters, equals thrice four channels. Sorted.

But in a typically Coole fashion, Bradders has fitted the first iPad I have actually seen fitted to a car – and in a full custom dash. Yes there were those who did it on day one of release of iPad One on YouTube and I have snapped pictures of iPad mounts and even have a headrest rear iPad mount here to test. (Sadly I will need to borrow an iPad to test it!) But this is the first one I have seen not just fitted but also used via a cunning Application (ooooh, I used the WHOLE word!) as the vehicle’s very binnacle, which is über-cool. There are, I gather, a few apps out there that can use the GPS speed function. The one Brad used is called ‘Speedo HD’ designed for the iPhone and adapted for the iPad. How clever is that?

Being Brad, Smoke & Mirrors has a mirror at the end of the bass tunnel, so when you look in, you see eight subs and your face and as we learned earlier, she has hydraulic suspension too, so the cubic in that bed is used to house the pumps and the batteries.

HUGE INSIDER TIP!! Brad told me that if you go to a PRIVATELY owned, that is, NOT a council recycling centre, you will be likely to find and buy-to-reuse some ‘˜old’ emergency power supply batteries for less crucial need. For there are computers all over the place that simply MUST have back up power supply and have the heavy-duty batteries used to ensure this, replaced every three years. This is a rich seam of huge, dirt cheap battery power (Brad’s finds were still ‘˜floating’ at 13v!) but only for those needing monster juice and who don’t care about the savage weight penalty.
And finally, just because it amuses him to have smoke pouring out from under his bonnet as if he was about to immolate horribly, there’s the bloody smoke machine! Hence the name ‘Smoke & Mirrors’.


I loved the crisp white finish (called ‘˜White Tint’- go figure) and how it bounced and boomed madder than Vimto and how the inside was so very sexy and smooth. It was loud as hell and with those tweeters is more about parking, hooking a mad scampering DJ up to it and literally Pumping Some Tunes!
If you want to see and experience Smoke & Mirrors for yourself, you can call Highdown Car Audio on 01903 238 119 and book a free moment and even consider some baddass audio for your ride.
For Highdown Car Audio can do audiophile too, as Jez himself has led his European Mobile Multimedia Association (EMMA) sound off team from the front to great team and personal success and is definitely developing that slight golden tinge to his earlobes.
Highdown have a cool website and of course Facebum presence as well. The site is here link
All in all, a wonderful expression of style, cool, Coole and of fabulous ice and a deeply fitting demonstration of just what can be done at your local neighbourhood in car electronics shop.
When that local just happens to be Highdown.
Check out the full slideshow gallery right here: link

POSTCSRIPT:
Highdown Car Audio and Security are opening a new shop-with-a-front and retaining their first light industrial unit premises, where Smoke & Mirrors was built, as a super-power workshop. You’ll read all about it right here on Talk Audio magazine as soon as we know more.