Damson TWIST Will Shake Your Thang

I was invited to check out Gadget Show Live at Christmas but the Friday of the press invitation also had a bit of a crucial family thing going on down south that day that I could not miss. The funeral of a friends’ father. Always sad but more poignant for me, as his best mate is Brad Coole, who I met through the scene a decade or more ago (Brad STILL holds a certain mega-driver class of SPL European record, I believe, for his pink Granada Estate that died as it literally was torn apart by the bass at the low quality Ford spot welds on the chassis but just for a change, I digress…) and I go fishing with Brad’s dad, Chris. The chap who died was dad to a seriously cool bloke and I reckon we might have followed a similar path as he was into all the same things I am, from fish to fur to cookery of it once you get home again!
Anyway, to stop doing a Ronnie Corbett of meandering narrative, I had just an hour to check out the Gadget Show and wanted to find novelties of coolness that would entertain you and Oh Boy did I hit paydirt!
There is this new PR dude I have met, called Domnic Dawes with the Andy Giles agency. He was sort of in the loop when I was sent on the most contrasting story of my career to date. It sounded painfully cool and hip but was as every day as visiting a guitar shop for a non-musician. Of course, if you are an axe-man, then you will be jealous as puke that I was invited to the not-to-be-revealed-location (why?) of the UK artist liason lounge for Fender Guitars. They have all their guitars, with sofas, backline kit, a practice room to really let rip in, a kitchen and a cinema system in the ceiling there that I was to report on. It was in an old Victorian brick built mausoleum of a building in a grubby bit of town but very ‘˜cool’. The chaps from Fender were pukka music bizz types I enjoyed meeting and Dominic, incidentally a real guitarist, went as pink-cheekboned in pure pleasure as if he was in the presence of a teenage masturbatory fantasy figure and reached for the instruments, before making little twiddly noises with electric guitars thankfully not plugged in throughout.
And as I toddled into the show at London’s Docklands’ ExCel centre, I met him on the Damson Audio stand, where he was helping promote this adorable little Bluetooth thingummy.
The Damson Twist Bluetooth Speaker

Billed as a loudspeaker, the Damson Twist isn’t one.
Rather, it is an exciter. That is, inside the device receives the Bluetooth audio stream and amplifies it then sends it in watts to a voice coil. Just like in a normal speaker. BUT, the coil is affixed not to a cone that goes up and down in a magnetic field, but to a panel inside and the MAGNET is what is suspended and goes up and down to meet the drive of the voice coil. This moving mass has a milled metal ‘˜foot’ that extends out to the little rubbery-based plinth.
The rubbery layer on the base of this foot is itself very high tech, in that it enables full range transference of the vibrations, without frequency-damping them, to allow excitation (i.e. being shaken about) of what ever the weighty little spud is stood upon, thus making it vibrate and become ‘˜one’ with the Damson to create a system we call a Loudspeaker!
Damson Twist comes in the most delicious packaging, which is itself an event to open up. I made an unboxing video. Which was a bit of a cheat as I had and this is very rare for this old and grizzled reviewer opened the thing up like it was Christmas as soon as I got it home (time of writing 19th December and excited) and checked it out, connecting it up to iPod and BlackBerry alike in advance.
Thing is, I made a minor impression on James Talbot, the company boss, when he told me that the product was a commercialisation of something that had been developed as a classified item for the US Navy. I immediately said, ‘That’s got to be about voice communications through hulls, for rescue and so forth!’ he looked impressed that I had got to the engineering root so fast.
But the Twist is a crazy little spud and will turn you into an intuitive laser interferometrist (read THAT word out loud dare ya!) as you try to guess which things will sound the loudest once Damson Twist is buzzing away upon it. You can even use the box it came in. They were using an actual acoustic guitar at the show. It was only when I got it home that I realised just how bizarrely good it is and marvel at how such a large frequency range can be buzzed into my desk top to turn my test bench into a loudspeaker.

I’d love to get Damson excited by Talk Audio, as I feel we could be a great marketing novelty as expert audio geeks for them. How about seeing if we can get them to become Talk Audio Site Associates and run a wee banner or square, so that we can be a source of mad marketing with a competition. Whereby you get a Twist and make a horn, or labyrinth, or Transmission line box, or whatever enclosure with a wobbly bit you think works, of card, wood, mica, plastic what EVER you want and we measure it with an SPL meter at a foot from the edge at a position the competitor wants it to be. And they win fame, notoriety as fabricators of excellence and what ever we can swag from Damson!!!
If you would like to be a woodsmith or whatever smith and see if you can make one Damson Twist louder than any one else, then just comment below or else chip in on the forum where this will also appear hell, in these days of multi-platform, that can also mean Tweet me via @TheAdamRayner or else gizz yer tuppence on Facebook. (rubbish punnery intended)
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