CAS Open Weekender 2013 With EMMA Round ONE
You know, this is the sixth year that I have had the happy honour of being asked to work for Raj and the team at Car Audio Security (CAS) as reporter, prize hander-outerer and general compere at their weekend-long seasonal open events. This time, we had a slew of loud cars and while my tiny wee PA is good up to a point, I have used the odd loud car as PA in the past, too and so not had to worry about mine being drowned out. Thus I didn’t plug my little system in initially. But somehow we got to prize giving and they had to have me simply raise my voice as it wasn’t set up in the tent, for which I apologise to the boss. As it wasno problem!
What was a problem, was MeJulie calling me up mid-prize-announcements and then redialling after I first refused her call. I was in a maelstrom of pure fear at that point and then did in fact get a couple of bits confused at prize giving as a result. For future rounds I have had a mad ‘kaizen’ idea! I’ll find out which classes are being run and make my own notes, rather than deciphering the ‘we-ran-that-class-into-that-one’ stuff off the sheets as we go, as I am clearly poor at that.
CAS’ Spring ‘do’ is now a lovely fixed star in the firmament of annual car HiFi shows and round one of the UK EMMA scene’s yearly league based sound off competitions is now a regular at CAS, too. They had a lot of amazing never-seen-louder bass cars and a lot of really good new SQ cars. Especially wonderful was that there were a goodly number of all-NEW entrants, including a bloke called Raff who had a lovely install and went on to win his class.
I had a small item of shiny swag to give him from Pioneer’s Girish Janday – that’s G’rish below on the decks in the Pioneer Brabus Smart carit was a brushed steel key-ring/bottle opener in a pretty box. And then we talked about his car audio fandom and how he progressed via equipment upgrades to eventually entering the sound off. He was very modest and yet as described, was an all-new force to be reckoned with.
We made a little video clip with him and Girish.
http://youtu.be/TrzSDkA1xnU
Earlier, I had made a video clip about the gently brilliant Clifford SmartSTART (aka Directed or even Viper!) global remote engine starting system to start the day off, then pretty much hosed the event down with the stills camera. Note the comments in the clip about the number of big high end Mercedes unable to start at airports after the owners come back from a month in Barbados&;
http://youtu.be/AUZuLSxENGI
And here’s the still of Pav with the CAS R8 showing off the clever internet starter system..Raj wants to take the rip outta him over the facial fuzz&;
There were some really mad-made cars, like the big folded horn this couple (Lolly and Jason) are simply sat insidethe white stuff is inside-of-box and is at least two inches thick all around. Massively strong. The bit you cannot see behind the Level 5 DC 18s, is the way it becomes a horn comprising the whole rear of the car. The black bits in the picture are welded STEEL reinforcement to the structure and they sit within a thus-rigidised structure. It made phenomenal bass.
Or this little lot:
I made a little montage-of-bassness for you as well&;.enjoy!
http://youtu.be/R6n-aaMT4nE
Of course the people make the event we had the Lord of the Lows, Ian ‘Iceman’ Pinder himself come to visit. I had to use ALL of my eight-and-a-half-feet of reach to get a shot of the 6’10’ Iceman looking UP at a camera.
Iceman.
And these two images speak for themselves.
(I REQUIRE one of these tees)
I papped the boss hisself.. of CAS:
And then sussed the security dude’s castanets clacking over the fabulously lovely pins and buns of the promo lass for the day, the lovely and sweetly camera-shy Sarah.
And having also, I admit, photographed her bum in those trousers in an only close-to-inappropriate way, (not in the gallery) I now offer a bit of beefcake for the girls, to redress the balance. Nice bloke, lovely car, visible sense of humour, disgustingly good looking&;
But the sound off was a BIG SQ event, too.
An eight-year-as-afforded project in a Mondeo (hellooooo to Sam Ellis, Mondeo fan!) completed and ALL by Paul Richardson.
The sales room was buzzing all weekend and the sound off ran on both the Saturday and the Sunday and was a huge success. The best attended season opener for SQ and bass in my entire career, and that is truly saying something.
All hail the leader Roo and the UK EMMA team! You guys rock and we all salute you!
And of course, the business that allows it all to happen on their premises.. created by stuff like THIS!
And here is a slideshow of all the pictures I took – well the good ones, anyway:
link