Week Twenty-Three – Here’s A Slice Of History

You know, one of the odder by products of longevity is how stuff you just knew, turns into ‘quaint historical fact’, like how you would record your cassettes with Dolby C noise reduction but playback with Dolby B for a brighter sound. And how Bradley Coole tore a 2.3 Ford Granada estate apart at the seams back in the Nineties by use of a lot of Maystar woofers. Or just how awesome it was when a car audio maker first produced an amplifier it said could make a thousand watts. The days before one over gauge power cable was on sale in the UK, the DAT and MiniDisc in car decks and Centrate components from Pioneer.
I recall that the early CD decks were £600 and a DAT player went on sale for £1,600. I can recall a Panasonic deck (when they sold ice in Europe) called the 909 that had a cute as ninepence little centre speaker called a Katana that went ‘schwing’ when you turned the power on and it motorised out to do centre channel duties as part of it’s DVD-A capabilities. Some of you won’t even know about poor old DVD-Audio…
Which is why I feel qualified to comment upon trends in UK mobile electronics. OK, we may now be looking at a business that is smaller than the headphones trade, due to modern OEM car systems getting better and the iPod coming with such a mid-fi standard headphone and there being literally millions of them, but in my world, things have never been better.
When I started, it was before the trend had kicked in and while it could be seen coming, it was a gentle growth. There were no more than five really high end installers in the UK and big bad serious installs were quite rare. Nowadays, there are lots of cars with serious systems and the availability of wickedly potent ICE and truly skilled installer talent has never been better. The living has been ripped out of a huge slice of the make-a-killing part of the trade. Back when I was a rep, they all had a Cosworth engined, whale-tailed Ford Escort parked out the front, covered in removable decals. That’s gone, but what has happened now is we have a closer-to-the-American model business where more and more people are aware that a ‘Ride’ can be ‘Pimped’ and have its value enhanced rather than devalued with bad work under a railway arch somewhere.
And Ian ‘Iceman’ Pinder’s Astra van has started a resurgence in UK multi-woofer Street Bass installs, with a whole slew of monster systems appearing for the Modified Nationals as their first day out and at least two broken-by-bass windscreens seen at the show.
So after ‘Lifetime Achievement’ awards and getting called Legend or Lord of the Lows, what’s left for Ian?
How about Bass Messiah?
History will record his name, graven on the throbbing root of your collective low frequency Id!
I’ll go get on, then…..
Adam Rayner – Online Editor