Subkick, anyone's built one?

[Fredrik-Ablaze]

I've got a 10 inch Peavey speaker lying around to no use at home and I was thinking about using it for a subkick mike.
What should I think about when trying that out? just mounting it to a stand and wiring it up or is it more to it?
Do you think It will be of any use or are the subkick elements different?

 

[alexrookie]

i built one half a year ago and i really like the sound of it!
my speaker is a bit smaller, i think it is the same size as the woofer is in the ns-10's!

so what did i do? quite hard for me to write in english!
when you just connect a speaker to your preamp the output of the speaker-mic is way too high to handle with!
my mixer doesn't have a damn pad and so i had to built one direct into the cable of the speaker! i think i reached a pad with something like - 20 dB or so- and that is enough!

so, if you have a pad in your preamp, just connect the speaker with a xlr cable - and that's it!
if you need a "selfemade pad cable" go on soldering one or two resistors in your signal path!
(i guess i used 600 ohm+1k ohm, but i am not quite sure)

the sound of my subkick is of course "boomy" and i high cut everything up to 60-70 hz and compress it a lot!!

hope this helped!!!

 

[carl@laruso.com]

Totaly not thought of doing this! I'm gonna have a spare ns10 cone in a couple of weeks too (i thought changing them both together would be the best plan)

EXCELLENT - I'll keep you posted

C

 

[Pman]

ive never actually understood the concept of subkick
without trying to sound n00bish, how does it work?

 

[006]

It's a speaker. Microphones are speakers wired in reverse to capture sound instead of project it. Increase the speaker size, increase your frequency response. Basically a SubKick, or home-made ones, capture a lot more low-end than a traditional mic, and you blend that in with your other kick signal and you have a fat as shit kick sound. This isn't all technical explaining here, but it's the general summary of what it does.

~006

 

[hourglass]

The concept has been described - it picks up super low frequencies. Mix it up under your inside kick mic and it will really pound.

Keep in mind, as someone else said, the speaker won't be putting out anything like a regular mic level. When you plug it into your pre you'll likely find that there's one magic spot on the gain knob where it goes from hard clicking distortion to super thump. Then, if you bump the knob a hair the other way you're back to distortion.

To make it more usable, wire it up with an unbalanced 1/4" cable. Plug that into a DI box. Hook the DI up to your mic pre.

Now you've got a usable device. Why pay extra for a stupid looking drum shell when the thing is just a speaker in a frame with a DI circuit?

 

[Pman]

im def gonna try this
i think ill look around for an old speaker