INSTALLATION: Mark ‘˜Team Ice’ Smith’s Ground Zero Volvo 850 Estate

The Bugatti Veyron of BASS! (Time Vampire warning, at least two hours’ material if all links followed!)
There is a WORD and the WORD is THARN. – THARN is when the bass is killing you. Literally.
In your body you have nerves. These are long cells that have ends called axons and dendrites. Where they meet to pass say, a ‘motor’ or ‘move your body’ signal at the join, called a synapse, a biochemical reaction occurs to ‘fire’ a signal onwards to say, pull your finger out of the candle flame by spinal reflex rather than voluntary action. (A bit of A-level Human Biology there.)
At 157dB precisely, human synaptic activity becomes severely impaired. You have seen girls go vacant and looking deeply shocked in hairtricks at 150dB-plus (if not, check the TATV BASS section, here: link but at 157dB it really starts to hurt worse than being spanked all over. (Not that I know about that&;) But you are impaired. You cannot move, you want to turn it down, reach for the volume knob but you cannot even think straight. It is deeply disturbing and Iceman’s Orion Astra could do it, Amar SPB’s scary SMD people carrier could do it and Loudvanman’s Digital Designs ‘thing’ could break windscreens while it was doing it.
But the sheer ability of Mark Smith’s Volvo 850 estate to really fuck you up, is unparalleled in my experience.
The grip and might is not about a near-the-end-of-the-envelope thing. No smelly coils no. Just brain-stupefying BASS! With a rich clarity and deep breathing profundity, the system measured absurdly high sound pressure levels, even at low frequencies and is yet far from run in. It’s just going to get louder and deeper.
So the car’s system can make you go ‘THARN’. It is a new word for car audio usage and shall only be applied to those who can cause true ‘synaptic impairment’ and reach 157dB+!
I know one lad who grunts internally and bears down like a Red Bull stunt pilot in a G suit to cope with the stupidity and the ecstasy! Myself, I have limits of enjoyment and by 160dB it is just a whole-consciousness-destroying craziness that no human being can withstand for long. Like the endless and deadly acceleration and power of the Bugatti Veyron, it’s great to have the limitless might, like the genie in Disney’s Aladdin but you wouldn’t want to unleash it every day.
Proving my point, another system launched at the Modified Nationals, the Vibe Hearse, was also able to REALLY crank. I was shown around by Rich who built it, while it was parked in the exhibition hall at Peterborough Arena . He said to come back later when he would have stuffed the batteries full and would leave the chargers ON while I had a go. So, two hours later, I came back. We got in and afterwards, it became clear that I was his ace in the hole beta tester. For if Adam Rayner of Talk Audio blew up a mind bendingly expensive piece of stock, like one of the incredible, sexy-huge weapons-grade surfboard-sized (OK, we get it! Guru) 9,000 watt Vibe Black Death Reaper amplifiers in the back, it would not be down to HIM!
So as we played a bit of Joe Bach’s mad Toccata and Fugue I let it fuggin’ rip and had to have Rich rescue me by operating the system because yes, I had gone a bit tharn and was just flapping around looking gormlessly distressed! He knew and turned it down for me, with his characteristic cracked grin.
Tharn.
OK, so seriously, what in the name of the Demon Beast of Total Harmonic Distortion is INSIDE Mark ‘Team Ice’ Smith’s Volvo 850 estate? We will go through every single speaker, after some images&;
Front systemry, Alpine IVA-D310RB in the dash&;

Both sets of doors front and back, house speakers and there is a PG EQ 230 in each door hideaway to boss them. All crossovers used are simply those on the amplifiers.

Side door speakers, better detail&;

Phoenix Gold EQ 230, 2×30 band graphic EQ equals heaven to a sound engineer of the old school! Two in the car, one each side, one does dash, the other all doors as they play the same array.

Subwoofer money shot.

And two layers deep of triple monstrous Ground Zero PL1.4000D class D mono amplifiers to drive them, One each at 4,000 watts into a 5,000 watts RMS woofer – so there is even headroom! 24,000 watts of bass that will decalcify your bones and render your spermatozoa immotile or imminentise your next period.

Team Ice, are Ian ‘Iceman’ Pinder, Mark Smith and Jaspal ‘Jazz 152dB’ Dole.

The best hair trick of the show.


The System
Compared to some cars, this is a deliciously simple-to-control set up, especially as it so mind-bendingly powerful. It is also a perfect vindication of one of very few ever awarded Talk Audio State of The Art awards. This was for the Pacific Accessory Corporation of America’s PAC LC-1 or simple Level Controller knob-in-a-box. Here: link call Celsus to find these, on 01202 664 390 to find a stockist.
There are four LC-1s in here. Three in a row under the Alpine IVA-D310RB slidey-out motorised screen single-DIN headunit and an additional one beneath that. The passenger side LC-1 knob controls the dash speakers’ level. The middle one controls signal level to the front door arrays and the right hand one does the level setting for signals feeding onwards into the rear doors and tailgate show sound speakers. The last LC-1 is beneath and is the ‘Biggest Bass Knob In UK Lows’ right now.
On the dash, we find GZ-CW6-4Y mids. This is a sexy SQ driver with a serious phase plug in the centre and there are two at either end of said dashboard – a whole new fabrication, as is every single panel in the car. Each has a GZ CT0500 small-bore bullet tweeter to back it up. One is in the door and one in the ‘A’ Pillar.
In the front doors are three each of the bigger badder and even more injurious to hearing health GZ CT2200 full-bore bullet tweeters and these live alongside fully six linen-edged midbass drivers per door, each eight inches across and made just to play mid frequencies with real power. They are the GZ-CW8-4.
Behind the rear doors are panels, each with a Phoenix Gold EQ 230 behind them, featuring two sets of thirty bands of analogue equalisation on faders. I loved these things so much in their day but in the door panels themselves, there are yet two more of the evilly potent big boy HF GZ CT2200 drivers and four more big linen edged mids, again in eight inch size, so GZ CW8-4.
The tailgate wasn’t finished when Mark got to the Modified Nationals, but like a true trouper, he was there dancing when the curtain came up, even if he was a bit naked at the time! Meaning that no matter WHAT, you SHOW UP when the show is on, ready to perform, even if you ain’t fully sorted! So, as well as two GZ CW10-4 tens, there is housing for another pair of the GZ CT2200 full-size bullet HFs in a well made panel, just not yet in by the time we got to the Modified Nationals. Mark doesn’t even want to add up the time this has taken in man-hours&;
LASTLY! What in heck? No, the real party is the subwoofer array and what makes it go boom.
Behind Mark’s sexy Corbeau seats, reside what he refers in the video to, as ‘his six kids’ such is his love for this stuff!
http://youtu.be/fXv9wmwdZSM
These are six of the most weapons-grade subwoofers that Ground Zero make. The GZ PW15XQ from the Plutonium line. RRP’d at £1,438.80, CAD sell them for £1,199.00, so even at their keen rates, you can see there has been an investment of more than effort! Now, these are Ground Zero’s ‘Street Bass’ product as they do another alongside this, that is made just to hit dB Drag numbers at 70Hz, with the laws of physics helping, rather than being abused, via twenty-four thousand watts from the six Ground Zero GZPL1.4000D amplifiers. Yet with their number and power, the insanity of an All Day Breakfast that can pound all day at 159dB plus, is reality, not 200dB fantasy (Ahem link
Ground Zero also do eighteens and a mighty crazy animal called the GZ PW18SPL-Extreme, it is a £2,600 woofer that can EAT 10,000 watts and yet is 95dB efficient. Making it a crazed weaponeraceous thing. The actual price is less, at £2,199 from Car Audio Direct here: link ANYONE buying one, I want to know about your system and possible feature-worthiness. For if you buy one of these, let alone more, well, I wanna know you!
After the Six Surfboards Of Bass, there are but four more amps, albeit all four channellers, thus offering sixteen more lots of oomph. Three are the GZNA4350XII being used to drive all those linen edged potent midband drivers in the doors and tailgate and one is the GZUA4135DX. The former is from the Nuclear range and sells at £500 a pop and the latter is £320’s worth of Uranium range amp and is driving the tweeters in all directions from the clear-panel covered location in the foot well floor of the passenger seat. The keen systems analysts amongst you will now be working out the intense complexity of Mark’s RCA systems and their ‘Y’ leads right now and going blind trying to visualise it all going through LC-1s as described! Chortle..
So there you have it, a BIG old treatise, not seen in this sorta detail since you saw this EPIC vehicle: link in The Iceman Cometh!
I know that Mark and Ian will be at all sorts of shows and general gatherings like the Ace Café all summer long and indeed, for the foreseeable, so if you see them in your quest to experience tharn, then simply give them the code. ‘The Fat Man Sent Me!’ and he will know, that you are brethren, and read all this stuff about him and may just, contest power issues allowing (for yes, that first coming is the strongest.) let you feel the power and might of 24kW of Ground Zero might.
And NOW, Laydeees and gennellmen! TIME for The Slideshow! Sit back, click, sip coffee, enjoy&;
link
And here’s a word from the UK importers of Ground Zero, Car Audio Direct, who said, ‘We are incredibly proud of Mark and Ian. Following the success of Matt Sprigg’s Shogun, link and then Edd Elson winning Bass King 2012 link we are very excited to have put Ground Zero firmly on the UK map as an SPL brand that takes no prisoners!’
GROUND ZERO KIT LIST
FOUR: GZ-CW6-4Y mids
FOUR: GZ CT 0500 small-bore bullet tweeter
TWELVE: GZ CT2200 full-bore bullet tweeters
TWO: GZ CT10-4Y linen edged midband power drivers
TWENTY: GZ CT8-4Y linen edged midband power drivers
SIX: GZ PW15XQ Fifteen inch metal coned 5,000 watt streetbass woofers
SIX: GZ PL1.4000D sub bass mono block 4,000 watt bass amplifiers
THREE GZ NA4350XII four channel amplifiers
ONE: GZ UA4135DX four channel amplifier RUNNING DASH
Mark Smith Said, ‘I’m very happy with the equipment, really happy with how it sounds and very happy with the scores it’s doing at the moment. The Value For Money – delivers good results. And a true friend of Ian and very grateful for all his help in picking the equipment. I’ve got a lot of respect for him and he’s a good friend and a bass brother.’
Dude, I just filled up. Or was that your 20Hz tone making me go&;.
THARN!