My homemade "Subkick" =)

[Destructos]

I've read some reviews on Yamaha's subkick and kinda got interested by the hoo-ha it got.

So I've built my own subkick with a 6ohm 6" unpowered subwoofer my family is no longer using.
Built a "pi attenuator" network with 3 10ohm resistors to attenuate the signal by about 10 dB (calculated just for this "microphone's" impedance), and yes, there's no clipping with the pad in place.

*Click on thumbnails for larger pictures*

Decided to leave it in the box, since it's mounted height is the same as the center of the kick drum.


A "pi" attenuator network, calculation formulas can be found here.


Will put that fragile portion in a box soon, but since Monster Cables take up so much solder, I don't think the joints would break so easy. :lol:


Decided to farther isolate the kick drum with a cheap sleeping bag since the bass guitar cabinet is just a few feet to the left of this pic (out of view).

In the mix, all I have to get the sound engineer to do is to peak the bass frequencies and roll off at about 100+Hz for that heartbeat skipping "thoomp" effect. Yay.

 

[unsane]

freaking sweet, got any clips?

 

[Destructos]

LOL, coming soon.

 

[DullTheater]

sory guys..
but wat exactly is a subkick.. and wat does it do?

 

[marcdadrummer]

it's simply like a subwoofer. like u buy a speakers without subwoofers the bass and treble would'nt be loud right?? so with this, my guess u heart would start to feel da beat man... respek..

 

[DullTheater]

oohhh.....
nice one....

 

[Sean]

but wat exactly is a subkick.. and wat does it do?

It actually works like microphone, one that is capable of capturing sub-frequency.

 

[Destructos]

The idea is to have the cone naturally pick up the low frequencies.
So a large cone can naturally capture that amount of air that the kick drum is able to push around.
Also, it's a good 1:1 translation from recording to output cuz most subwoofers use cones that size anyway.

What I like about this is that it does NOT pick up the high frequencies like snare and cymbals, so for that heart stopping "oomph" factor, I can just get the sound man to increase the gain of the channel this would be connected to and voila.