Modified Live 2012 EMMA Round 3

Last year the largely North-Eastern crew who selflessly run the UK EMMA scene and work with Andrew Ackerley and his family were finding Brands Hatch a bit foreign. It was roasting hot and folks from the North-East are just not used to that sort of thing. It was hotter than it gets for them, even at the same time of year and they suffered. This year, the weather was of course bloody horrible and less heat stressy for them. It looked to cripple the roll-up gate for the promoters as they only seemed to be getting the actual folks taking part – along with their closest chums come to see them , despite the rain. Even with it brightening up later, there were plenty of folks who stayed away.
Nevertheless the EMMA sound off scene continues to go from strength to strength and has been recruiting new enthusiasts from their experiences last season. One in particular, Richard Salmon, was just at the last event at Trax last year and so had to enter a pretty tough class for an entrant who is basically still a rookie but he is full of evangelical zeal for high end SQ car audio and he has impressed the EMMA elite with how fast he has improved his system and sound in his R32 Golf.
Richard Salmon, rising sound off star!

They had a seriously large 43 car turn out and yet the stalwart judging team of head install judge Andy Blanch and head sound judge Dave Legg, with the support team of Kevin Hall, Christian Martin, Mick Alderson and Horst Starke, with family of Zoë and Sue and Pa bear as backroom team, got everything done on time and then had yours truly give out the new trophies. These are the true heroes of the sound off scene.
Someone in the competitors’ camp whinged that the new golden, silvery and bronze ‘One’, ‘Two’ and ‘Three’ numeral trophies mean anyone can see where you came as they look at your mantel shelf! But they are smart and the guys who won were chuffed to get their gongs.
Winners, all.

The sweeties at Dodo Juice swagged fifty quid goody packs for three lucky entrants, Jim Furness, James Francis and Adam Halford, all who own nice paintwork that’ll benefit from the juice of the Dodo. As well as getting a finger mitt and buffing cloth and a Karabiner-style key ring with desirable Dodo juice logo-style bottle opener to go with the precious pot of sexy wax. Thanks Dodo! (Don’t forget to check out Waxstock if you care about car detailing.)



The event itself is always bonkers with racing pickup trucks and racing full size trucks with snorting turbo charged diesels and ability to burn out from standstill! They would drive on and off the track via our area, all stinky clutches and brakes and smelly tyres.
We had the fabulous Project X Mercedes Vito van with the lovely mad audio install in it to use as P.A. and even entered it into the EMMA SPL contest! It hit a phat 145dB (and don’t forget the cubic inside is huge) with the doors shut and would have won, had they had a 20-points-worth of ‘book’ of installation photography. It got a third place trophy in any case!

The sun came out later in the day, although patchily and we ended up with a lovely group shot of all the entrants who’d placed. And as well as the general snaps, I did do some hosing down of a couple of cars to turn into full features in a (hopefully) short while.
Meanwhile, I also did some video. First, on a lower voltage than normal and mostly to delight a totally adoring daddy in the shape of Mr Chris Smith, we did the youngest person ever to do a hair trick. First dad made sure to go buy some serious hearing protection foam earplugs for young lass Charlie and then, she had her locks flung about. She looks a little fretty at first, but that was probably me (!) but grinned&;


Then after some time had passed to allow James Jarrett from Highdown’s Polo to ramp its voltage back up a tad, we barbecued his mate Lauren with bass. I have seen a system move more air with greater violence but it’s always a hoot to do these.


And of course, I had to check out the Vito install as well, since we set the AudioControl SPL meter just chugging away on continuous show in the cabin.


All in all, it was a really fun day out, despite the crappy weather. Yes sunshine would have made it epic but I loved it. As they have organised such a neat location, the cars have only yards to go inside after they arrive at the paddock entrance and we are right next to the posh café/loos building, so it’s compact and feels just like our own event, with ornamental nuttyness going on in the background!
The next Round Four is held at Ultimate Street Car at Santa Pod on 4th and 5th of August. See you there.
To find out more about EMMA (European Mobile Media Association) and how to enter a sound off and what’s involved go check out the EMMA UK website here: linkand to see the fun and all the shots.. check out the slideshow below – you can ping individual shots open bigger if say, you need the check out Cherry’s body art on her thigh that bit better&;