Giddens may be a musician and owner of a bicycle company but he freely acknowledges the concept of combining the two was not down to him. "In 2010 the American pedal power band, the Ginger Ninjas toured Europe bringing their own system with them. This system worked fine but it was heavy and it was hard to pedal enough energy to power the sound. My bike business targets the idea of urban mobility, carrying more stuff on bikes and lowering the carbon footprint so it seemed to me that a logical step was to try and develop a more user friendly, efficient system."
Together with fellow band member Heinz Rebellius, Giddens set about looking at different loudspeaker systems and how they could be adapted for pedal power use. Rebellius continues thestory, "We initially planned to use a system at the Frankfurt Musikmesse but the logistics were not easy to solve and we began to feel that we had run out of options. Conveniently for us, Bob had recently sold a bike to Wolfgang Daub from d&b audiotechnik and mentioned our dilemma to him. To be honest, I think d&b chose us, because they liked the idea of a self powering music performance so much."
Giddens is in full agreement, "d&b immediately understood what we were doing and offered all the help they could. We visited them, toured the factory and explained our concept; they even painted their loudspeakers green for us! The idea was that the system had to be mobile, transported on bikes, but also be able to reach 300 people in an outdoor environment. We used E12 loudspeakers on tripods driven by D6 amplification."
"It worked like a dream,"Rebellius adds, "This is a very powerful system. Even on an open airstage it delivers enough power to rock, but more than that, as a band we really like the sound of the system. We don't often get to sound check as, without a spectator to pedal, there is no electricity, but the d&b system never lets us down come show time."
(Jim Evans)
