my DIY Subkick is pittyfull!

[ApolloSpeed]

Well.....since I was messing around, I decided to make a quick DIY Subkick with a couple different speakers I had laying around.

I took an XLR cable and spliced the male end #3 and #2 to + and - of my terminals.....then into my DI set to a -20 pad, then into the Firepod.

First I tried my 3.5" Harmon Kardon midrange speaker.......had wayy too much midrange, no bottom, no high end, and a little distortion.

Second, I tried my 10" Rockford Fosgate 4ohm Car Sub.......a little bottom end, and lots and lots of distortion!!

Then, I tried my Peavey Sheffield 12" 1200series (out of 5150 cabs) 16ohm speaker.......once again, a little more bottom end, and still....Tons of distortion!!!

Whats up with the distortion? I got a -20 pad on, and the levels only reached like -9 db in the DAW.....and never clipped on the Firepod.

Weird..... but here is a clip of what I got. http://www.myplasticfriends.com/subkickpeavey.mp3

 

[xmarcelx]

maybe you need some resistor parallel as a load for the speaker .. that would dampen the speaker... like mentioned on the sm57 gizmo thread...
I'm not sure .. the impedance of a speaker is much lower than of a normal mic...

 

[STINNETT]

I've heard that those things put out a crazy hot signal. It also seems to be the general consensus that a 6" speaker is pretty much ideal.

 

[ApolloSpeed]

yep Hot signal indeed.....thats why I put a -20db pag on it.

....and I only happen to have a 3.5", 8", 10", and 12" speakers. Supprisingly, none of them sounded remotely good! I keep getting a distortion, and pretty much not the good lowend everyone else is getting.
I'm not too familiar with resistors and/or calulating what I would need.:Smug: But would that really solve my distortion prob?

....or doesn't my Rolls DI box w/ -20 pad do the same thing a resistor would?? Or do I need to bring the speaker impendance up even more.....before going into the DI?

holla,

 

[Familia><Publica]

Ah, that would be your problem see, Pags are no good. Try a Pad.

 

[ApolloSpeed]

haha....pad I mean. ;-)

 

[flhctroll]

MAybe the pad is post input? Puting a resister before the input might solve it. I dunno, just an idea. Have you searched for "how to build subkick" or somethin?

 

[ApolloSpeed]

yeah that the strange part......most people seem to just randomly pick any size and any ohm speaker, and it work great. No resistor! I guess I suck ;-(

 

[xmarcelx]

maybe try a lowpass filter (set very low) on the recorded signal... this could kill some of the distortion!
But maybe the DI box is the problem! Isn't a DI box for Hi Z input and low Z output!
The speaker has a very low Z!

 

[RootBoundApollo]

Ah, that would be your problem see, Pags are no good. Try a Pad.

LMFAO

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Sorry to necro an old thread, but I am getting ready to do this with a BX8a monitor (well, just the speaker).

Anyone have any mounting ideas? I read the little article that AudioGeek Zine put out, but no instructions really on how people mount this. Should I just build a box? Snare stand?

Saw someones idea of putting resisters to cut down the output so no pad is necessary and will almost definitely be doing that.

To the originator of the thread, did you ever get yours working?