BK-LFE Low Frequency Effects System

I have a home theater and I have installed the Aurora bass shakers in the past... they work OK and give you some good feedback. Then I stepped it up and invested in the Buttkicker LFE.. I have 2 rows of 3 theater seats and I bought 1 LFE for each row. I mounted them to the frame under the middle non-reclining seat (see pictures) and I am driving these 2 in a series by the Dayton SA1000 amplifier. This is a great setup, I generally only need to have the gain at around halfway to drive a great experience in the 2 seats. I got creative mounting these because I knew they needed to be solid... so I found these aluminum 1" extrusion bars from "8020" and mounted them to the frames with T-nuts. Overall, I don't see how this could have been done any better and I am very happy with the outcome. Remember if you run more than 1 Buttkicker LFE on a single amp, run the wires in a "series" to get the most out of the amp.

I have a Clark and a Buttkicker. Clark is rated for 250 watts, Buttkicker is over 1000 watts. Buttkicker was twice the price, so I bought the less expensive Clark first. The application was the long roof of a bare metal limousine: It has the perfect resonant surface area for 0.0001 Hz through 150 Hz. It would be a giant subsonic subwoofer. The Clark worked (functionally), but I made one miscalculation, and two horrible mistakes. I miscalculated the force required to be applied to the roof for proper roofline deflection. The Clark only provided about 50% of the desired effect. The first mistake was pretesting it without mounting it first to a solid surface. Applying ~125 watts caused it to overheat, and it smelled like the voice coil was burning. The second mistake (fatal) was driving it with the out-of-range intermittently peaking signal of ~325 watts. It happily took the abuse until the internal guts failed and broke loose. It sounded like ball-bearings in a coffee can. Although it has internal overcurrent protection, driving it at just under its threshold can still significantly reduce its lifespan. Next, The Buttkicker is different. It does not operate on a voice coil/permanent magnet arrangement. Instead, the BC is a linear actuator / motor. It can handle the current, and based on my application, it thoroughly enjoys the abuse. There is one major requirement that I have not found listed anywhere, and you will thank me for sharing the following fact: Do NOT use a Class D amplifier to drive your low-frequency tactile transducers. It barely works... it hardly works... do not waste your time with cheaper, energy-efficient, smaller, cooler Class D amplifiers. The answer is A, but all you will find is AB. Class AB amplifiers will reproduce frequencies below 5Hz with huge amounts of power and force. You NEED this for your transducer. The last consideration when building your transducer/amplifier system is filtering. You must completely filter out anything above 250 Hz. You will need to let your subwoofers punch out anything higher than that. Going higher than 200Hz will strain the transducer, and there is no internal filtering that will prevent it from trying to buzz itself to pieces. My car stereo has menu options to electronically adjust a low-pass crossover, and has a dedicated subwoofer output (Kenwood $250 dual-DIN). The amplifier I am using is a bridged R.F. Renegade 550 (probably 450 watt peak). It has band pass and subsonic amplification control knobs. I am considering upgrading to a higher wattage amp because after about 25 minutes of SHAKING the car at 7Hz, it overheats, and shuts down. It does auto-reset, no permanent damage is done. The amount of action I get from my 550 watt amp is too much for the car to handle. I have had to bolt things back together throughout the car. Windows shake out of their tracks, a side mirror fell off, people are hurting their necks from turning to look. It really is too much, but think about it this way: the trunk is empty, and my wallet is phat. The money invested is $600 between the head unit, the transducer, and the amp, but the system sounds like I invested a few thousand! To summarize: FILTER CLASS AB BUTTKICKER 1000watt 8 AWG (30A fused at the battery) A SOCKET SET CONTACT ADHESIVE ICE DARK SUNGLASSES (and preferribly an old 6-door Cadillac service limousine) ___________________ Please share this information everywhere you can, you all have my permission. I couldn't find these answers on the internet, nobody tries stuff like this anymore. I hope my efforts will save someone some time and money. -Nathan, PDX

With this Buttkicker LFE (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007P98K6/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and the Dayton Audio SA1000 Subwoofer Amplifier (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002IAA2A8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1), it will literally shakes the entire condo (and my neighbor's too!)... way overkill for a small condo, but WOW!, makes any action movie a true "experience"... Needs some really heavy furniture to keep it planted to the floor (with the standard mounting base/bracket) when you really cranked it (or at certain frequencies).. it can start to hop/flap all over the place, losing a ton of quality/performance (proper mounting/installation is key to performance)... Certainly beats the pants off of my Buttkicker Gamer2 with 90-watt amp (the smaller Gamer2 is still great for a solid/heavy chair mount, but a little light for a home theater with large heavy furniture when you want to REALLY feel the power). I did have to buy a small table-top fan to keep it cool though, since it does get REALLY hot to the touch when I drive it REALLY hard for a long time (super low-frequency at a "constant" high volumes--good ventilation is essential)... that's why only four stars.

The ButtKicker is capable of adding a new dimension to your home theater but it has to be installed correctly to realize it's maximum potential. As I found out through my own experience, there are two important factors to a successful installation. First of all the the ButtKicker has to be mounted securely to the seats you are going to use it with. For my installation on a dual recliner, I used 12 gauge perforated angle steel that is available in the home stores. After cutting the pieces to size, I bolted them to the angle steel frame that connects both recliners together and then bolted the ButtKicker to that. At this point I thought the installation was complete, so I wired it up to the ButtKicker BKA-1000-4A power amp and picked out a DVD with some LFE`s on it. Well right away I experienced the tactile sensations that I was promised but as soon as the LFE effects level increased, the ButtKicker would start to bottom out hard and this was very distracting. I decided to call customer support and I would like to aknowledge the incredible customer support that is available from The Guitammer Co and is only a phone call away. I talked to Mark, a very knowledgeable enthusiast and he explained to me that my installation was not complete and why it wasn't. The ButtKicker can create an incredible amout of shake and transfer it to whatever it's bolted to. But here's the second factor- whatever it's bolted to has to be able to move. All of you have seen subwoofers in action, the large cone has suspension around it so it can move freely. The same logic has to be applied to your ButtKicker installion. If you check out the Buttkicker website, you will see that they sell rubber isolation feet. Installing the appropriate size and number of these feet will complete your installation. After I installed a suspension system under my recliner, I was amazed at difference. My recliner is sitting on a concrete floor and the reason my ButtKicker was bottoming out is because it was trying to move something it wasn't designed to. Now, with the suspension system in place I can turn down BK amp and enjoy abundant shake with no bottoming out. The ButtKicker LFE is truly an impressive addition to my home theater and my only regret is that I didn't add it sooner. The ability of it to respond to frequencies below 10hz is outstanding and I am actually able to turn my subwoofers off and still have a very involved audio\tactile experience. Still, my favorite moments occur when watching the face of guests the first time they are watching a movie and an explosion or other LFE rich segment occurs, sometimes they will jump out of the seat not sure what just happened!

These are chunky and heavy. Will require bolts and multiple screws for a firm install. They require a bit more power and responds to lower frequency as compared to the Tactile 329. Costs much less!

One of these is enough to shake our entire dual reclining metal frame sofa with the right amplifier. The effect definitely enhances movies once you have it dialed in. It’s easy to have too much shake or at too high frequencies which can be distracting, but once it’s rumbling correctly it’s an incredible experience. The rocket sequence in first man will make you feel like you’re along for the ride, or the spider tank footsteps in Ghost in the Shell is another great example to try. Can’t wait to watch some old classics like Jurassic Park now with the new addition!

The product does EXACTLY what its name suggests. It will kick your couch, your chair, or your whole house if you ask it to! I was very pleasantly surprised by the new dimension the Buttkicker LFE brought out in movies and especially video games. If you like the shoot 'em up style video games, the feel of a .50 cal machine gun giving you a perfectly timed and sonically accurate recoil-kick for every single round fired will blow you away (no pun intended)! It can be tricky to set up if you already have a complex home theater set-up going, but it's simple and flexible design rewards the extra couple of minutes in your A/V receiver's crossover/LFE levels settings menus! Their service is something you never find anymore.. You get a real person with the touch of only 1 button, who works for the company (not some outsourcing offshore giant!), and who treats you the way you wish all companies would: with sincerity, respect, and follow-through. Marvin even took extra time to offer installation tips and suggestions in detail with me. I never really write product reviews because most products, even if they're good, don't warrant taking the time to do so. The Buttkicker is an exception that truly stands out. If you've got home theater, you're crazy not to add one or more of these guys!

The Buttkicker BK-LFE in conjunction with your subwoofer really helps to create an immersive experience when watching movies with a good LFE sound tracks. I'm really addicted to the effect now, watching an action or sci-fi flick without a Buttkicker would be like watching the movie on a 27" screen. There are three sizes of Buttkickers, the BK-LFE is the largest size. If you have a powerful subwoofer, you really need the largest Buttkicker to go with it. However, I found that the LFE tracks in newer movies (Star Wars VII, VIII, Mad Max Fury Road, etc) have a wider dynamic range than older movies, and the loudest passages can cause the Buttkicker to "bottom out" and it sounds like an impact wrench when it hits the stops. This doesn't happen very often, but unfortunately, it often coincides with very intense scenes (Kylo Ren interrogating Rey in Star Wars VII, first 30 minutes of Mad Max), and it can cause you to drop out of the "suspension of disbelief" key moments in the movie. To that end, I am using two Buttkicker BK-LFE's on my sofa, and the effect is absolutely fantastic, intense shaking with no unwanted rattling. You are really there.