After Passing of Founder Cicada Carries On

share on:
Cicada Motorcycle Audio

Cicada Audio is continuing to operate following the passing of founder Larry Frederick.  The company is run by CEO Larry VanSickel, who has been with Cicada since its inception.

In the past, VanSickel has owned both Diamond Audio and Cerwin Vega Mobile (before they merged).  He also invested in Lightning Audio and sold it to Rockford, and then served as Managing Director of Lightning at Rockford.

VanSickel said Cicada has a year to 18 months of product in development under Frederick’s direction.  It just hired Marty Deane (who owned high end retailer Soundz Plus, IL and most recently worked at Tury, a sister company to Soundigital).  Deane will serve as Director of Sales.

“I was with Larry from the very beginning of Cicada…I’ve been here since day one,” said VanSickel.  “Larry set everything up from the very beginning, with the understanding that it was going to be his legacy and at some point in time, he would exit..he was 73…  We added Forrest a year ago. We just added Marty Deane…”

Larry VanSickel Cicada Audio CEO
Larry VanSickel, Cicada CEO

Forrest Hamberlin is now Operations & Technical Support Director and the company will be hiring someone to lead product development.  Hamberlin was a store owner for 12 years and was part of Rockford Fosgate’s Tech Support and New Product Validation team for 19 years.

VanSickel continued, “Larry was so happy because when we came out of February, we just had a record, fantastic month, and it’s carried over to March, because now we’re into season. We’re happy given the business is only 15 some months old since it’s been out in the market.  It’s a real success story, a story on how good Larry Frederick was.”

The two started working on the company and developing products a year before Cicada was launched.  Cicada has 80 different motorcycle audio SKUs and has 40 more planned for release throughout this year.

Two new models are in the BDA series (Big Damn Amp). In addition, “He worked on a waterproof coaxial horn he was very proud of. The 5 ¼ inch model is shipping and the rest of the series is coming…It’s just been a crazy success…the 3-inch tweeter RR3T. He’d come to me and say, ‘I don’t know, this is crazy, but these guys want to separate the speaker from the woofer in the bag.’ We made 100 and sold through them before they were released.”

Van Sickel added, “There will never be another Larry Frederick, but we can definitely continue the equipment he had going forward.  We have all the factories he worked with over the last ten years.  That portion of the puzzle is covered.”

VanSickel and Frederick met in 1983 when Frederick was at Coustic and VanSickel was just coming from retail.  VanSickel purchased Diamond Audio from the original owner around 2006 and then bought the car audio division of Cerwin Vega from the Stanton Group a year later.  He hired Frederick at Diamond before selling Diamond and Cerwin to Hamid and Adam Razipour.

VanSickel joined Lightning Audio in the late 90s and after five years at Rockford, he launched a now-20-year-old company called Wireless Edge, which sells accessories and Bluetooth modules to leading suppliers.

 

Want to receive industry news? Sign up here
share on:

2 Comments

  1. So sorry for the loss. I know you will continue the great legacy. Also I have known Forrest for years. I been in the audio industry for over 40 years. I been a big dealer of Rock Fosgate and Cerwin Vega since the 1985. I still have some of Jim Fosgate early amps before it was called Rockford Fosgate. God rest his soul too. From Fair Oaks Electronics. The original home of the master installers.

  2. I am confident that Larry VanSickel and his quality team will make Larry Frederick proud and continue the legacy he helped create.

Comments are closed.