Here we are with the K and M Van ready to make the car audio Earthquake at Santa Pod raceway the home of British drag car racing on a sunny Wednesday morning, with 30 of the the biggest and the best car audio systems in the country.
The day is a challenge to create an Earthquake on the Seismograph (Earthquake measuring machine) and to set a Guinness world record for how much BASS the cars and vans can make as an equivalent to dynamite going off half a mile away. With the presence of the ITV News crew and Fast Car magazine photographer and reporter also covering the events and With two independent educators Adam Rayner a home and car audio journalist and also the organiser of the event, Chris from Axis distribution a major car audio distributor in the UK we are set to break and set the records.
Who is going to measure the Quake you may ask well the men from Vibrock ltd based in Derbyshire
are on site to do the measuring these people also measure the real earthquakes in the UK and around the world, part of there day to day job is to measure dynamite blasts in mining and queries.
With the sun beaming down Geoff (The Firestarter) started to organise the vehicles in a big square around the vibrock measuring equipment ready for the first blasts of BASS.The K and M Van and Geoff’s van parking closest to the measuring equipment, with Ian The Ice Man Pinder and Bass mechanic from Newcastle finishing the square of cars and With the rest of the cars and the vans in place the warm up starts, well it’s not really a warm up it’s a excuse to play loads of BASS at the organisers TV crew and the other participants. Adam eventually calls some order amongst the immense volume and madness the decibel level at that point must have been 150 DB +!
The plan was for everyone to play the same BASS frequency at the same time, first up 40Hz this is painful but at the same time a really good feeling of having your body shook with over 200000 watts of music power. With Adam rayner collecting all the results and conferring with the Vibrock guys we move on to a 30Hz power blast of BASS, everyone ready yes Chris gives the signal and away we go 30Hz at well over 150db this is a major amount of air movment at this point everyone who was in the EPICENTER of the earthquake would have been concentrating on breathing and not so worried about there hearing. The results once again are recorded ready to take back to Vibrock HQ for more Analise, one thing we did learn at this point is that the lower 30Hz frequency makes a smaller reading on the richter reading than the 40Hz frequency. On to the big play from all the car audio systems this time we are instructed to play the piece of music that each one of us think our own systems plays the loudest, me and Anthony have a quick discussion about which CD track to play and the answer is Ice Man J with the track It’s The Quad. Ok everyone ready again yes Chris gives the signal again and away we go, this time with a little music in background for a change but still the most amazing amount of BASS, I have never ever experienced this much BASS, more than any rock concert including The Red Hot Chili Peppers, the only thing that comes close to this is The Euro Fighter ( Typhoon ) aircraft at the Southport air show and that only makes a few children cry, i think all the kids would cry if there had any been here.
Back to the results Adam and the Vibrock people get to work with all the equipment with loads of numbers frequencies G force and movement axis to workout for the final conclusions, one result that we got almost right away is that playing the individual music tracks makes the most BASS and the most movement on the Seismograph, with the final results still to be announced a rough guide to the dynamite in a quarry half a mile away comparison was 300Kg of dynamite. To set this in the Guinness book of records as the loudest most powerful gathering of car hi-fi systems ever is now in the hands of Adam rayner.
You can watch the build up of the day with the wigan based K and M Acoustics Van and all the others in our video of the days mega BASS day out at Santa Pod. The K and M Video link . This video also shows the measuring device and Adam and Chris conducting the proceedings.
The ITV News crew seemed to have a fun day out with the news reporter not quite understanding the need for this much BASS, generally screaming every time the BASS was played, then the camera man couldn’t hear a thing she was saying and with the microphone on the camera distorting with the pressure of the BASS waves, after about 2 hours of trying to film they asked for some piece and quiet so they could interview Adam rayner about the day and what it was in aid of. If you have ever heard the term “The silence is deafening” then this was it from a 5 hour drive from wigan with a noisy transit van then 2 or 3 hours of BASS we were transformed to the English countryside with only the sound of a sheep about three fields away. The ITV News crew got there interviews ready to make the 6 o’clock news that can be watched on the ITV News website under the 6 o’clock news on the 22/10/2008 follow A wigan car hifi shop gets it’s name on ITV News then search ” loud car ” and watch the clip.
One of the best illustration of how loud the car hifi systems are is when the girls with long hair sit in the door gaps of the vehicles that are playing the BASS, this can be seen on either of the two videos with the ITV presenter and one of the girls taking part in the challenge, with a lot of screaming and hair movement you will get the idea of how loud and powerful these BASS systems actually are. This is also known as “The hair trick”.
After all the testing and news reporting it was time to park back up on solid ground and have a bite to eat and check out the other cars and vans that took part, K and M Acoustics supplied the pork pies and with Adam supplying the pop crisps and every thing else everyone got fed and watered, I have quite a lot of photos to upload of all the cars taking part so more later on that.
More pictures of the Gimme Richter can be found on this link.
By this time it was about 2 o’clock and we still had a five hour drive ahead of us so we said our good buys and headed of the fields of Santa Pod with the 12 x 18″ sub woofers still blasting! We had a break from traveling just after Birmingham to get fuel and a drink. If you have a Very Load car hi-fi system it’s only natural that you give the service station and the cash machines a good old blasting to see how many alarms go off, then don’t hang around. Next the fuel stop, got the fuel paid the man then oh yes 25Hz right through the petrol station. It’s not hard and it’s not clever, but yes it is FUNNY! Move on Quickly!
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Thanks to Adam raynor ITV News Fast Car Magazine Vibrock LTD And all the BASS Heads
