Mmats Polaris ATV: The International CES, Las Vegas 2015

21st January 2015 Adam Rayner

I visited Mmats in the North halls and can reveal that Mr. Thompson, who bought the company from the owner some few years back, created the original BoomZilla cartoon strips. He would wear a white lab coat and had a small ‘˜shack’ on the show floor. It was called ‘The Room Of Doom’. It was a time when 150dB was almost unheard of and no-one was allowed to use tones in Sound Pressure Level or SPL loudness contests. In this room, like a solid little shed, were, as I peered around the door, two speaker boxes. Each had three serious-looking fifteens in the face of them. A small-looking amp was clearly hooked up to these speakers and a tone generator was also obviously plugged in.
Moreover, a display showed 150.1dB on an SPL meter, an AudioControl one, if I recall. I was just taking all this in, when I suddenly found out that the doorway I had my head inside, was actually the port of a very large bandpass enclosure driven by six sealed fifteens. I was boomed to my guts, shaken around, shaken up and jetlagged as I was, instantly enraged, then almost as fast as I could turn around to see the true lifer-basshead-grin on Thommo’s face, I was overcome with hilarity.
Thus, Jim Gentry, mild-mannered acoustician became, after bio-mutagenic particle ingestion, a speaker monster called BoomZilla, every time Jim was suddenly and unexpectedly subjected to loud sounds and bass in particular. It ran for two years and I loved it.
So, the products go way back for me and so does Jj Royce, now driving huge mine ‘˜things’ 1,600 kilometres north of Perth, Western Australia, who made them famous in later years. So I always go to say hello and after my glad-handing on day one, I spotted that on day TWOthe Ranger had showed up on their stand.
I shot this video of their hopped-up-heaped-with-audio Polaris Ranger ATV-on-stilts
http://youtu.be/hQAIcm9HTO8
Finally, if you have time for over 240 pictures with captions, then click the link below. It will set a slideshow in motion with all the pictures from above – and the entire trip:
Link
I had an awesome time and wish to thank you for reading and watching, the CEA for the kind invitation and PRPR for making it happen for me.
Currently, as far as I know, Mmats do not have a UK distributor. Here is their website, though: Link be warned, shipping ex Florida, is gonna cost ya!