Buttkicker 2 and BKA-1000-4

A whole lot of shakin' going on...

By Max Christoffersen

December 2003

Buttkicker 2 and Buttkicker BKA-1000-4 amplifier. $800 and $1200 each.

"Did the earth move for you honey?"

I simply had to ask after the chair had stopped shaking. I'd just completed the last step of a major modification to my Fresh Ear chair and the Buttkicker was the newest addition to the ongoing tactile experimentation.

The bass-waves were still rolling through the chair when the answer came back; "Yes it did... and I didn't like it!"

"Perfect," I thought. Just the response I had hoped for.

You see there's nothing quite like getting your butt kicked. And there's nothing quite like the Buttkicker to do it for you. Unlike so many other audio products the Buttkicker tells you exactly what it does. And it's not shy about it..

The easiest way to describe tactile Buttkicker sound is to imagine you're standing next to a heavy earth moving machine. When you feel the earth move as the big roller rumbles by, that is where the Buttkicker comes in - it makes those deep bass sounds that literally shake the earth.

Cosmetically the Buttkicker looks like one of those BMW transverse motorbike engines with the head on the side. It's all heat sinks and industrial looking metal. The trick is the Buttkicker uses a metal piston suspended in a magnetic field that moves up and down creating the bass energy that recreates tactile low end. It's maintenance free, damn-near indestructible and unlike voice coil shakers, is able to go lower, longer and harder than anything else.

Mounting the Buttkicker is a simple matter of screwing it into furniture or on a sub-platform the Buttkicker sits on. It's then plug and play with a subwoofer feed going to a powerful amplifier.

Irene!

The first thing most tactile fans do is find the deepest most earth shattering bass extension available and sit down and see if they really can simulate the fear factor that deep sub-bass instinctively brings.

After several years of experimentation, that scene is in Blackhawk Down. You know you're near it when you hear the name "Irene". And we're not talking a minor vibrations here - we're talking shaking my seat so violently   that my vision was affected. But I could still see my normally stable chair was moving around 10-15 mm. In practice that translates to fear factor that puts the TV show to shame. The 'feel' of the helicopter rotors was real, while the sounds and the shaking place you inside the helicopter as a passenger going along for the ride.

More Power!!

When I first 'auditioned' the original Buttkicker in the late 1990s, the importers were using a massive $6000 amplifier to drive the unit. It was doing the job but the financial overkill was clear. If you need to move three pounds of piston you need power. And lots of it. Paper cones are relatively easy compared to controlling a three pound metal piston!

Enter the lighter more responsive and powerful Buttkicker 2 and the matching Buttkicker amplifier, the BKA-1000-4, together, quite possibly the most powerful tactile combination on the planet.

While waiting for the new Buttkicker amp to arrive I foolishly bridged my Carver amplifier to a Kilowatt and drove one of my original Buttkickers with the depth charge scenes from U571. All was well, but suddenly the Carver gave up, fried itself and is now little more than a paperweight. The moral of the story is the Buttkicker requires a genuinely powerful amplifier.

The specifications of the Buttkicker amplifier translates into genuine real world power. With more than 2100 watts into 2 ohms - that's a whole lot of shaking going on! Not only can the Buttkicker amplifier comfortably handle one Buttkicker, it can handle two with additional low-end bass boost!

Show-time!

So is all this just a novelty? A cool trick to show off to your friends? Nothing more than a gimmick and a quick thrill when all else fails? For those who have been around tactile sound for some time, tactile bass quickly becomes a necessity not a nicety. Tactile bass is addictive and fun. It separates out the home theatre systems that are passive to ones that are active and engaging.

Sure, for some the feeling may be overkill. It may even be more anti-fi than hi-fi, but it does heighten realism and involvement. Family and friends will have different reactions to chair-shaking-bass ranging from loud laughter to paranoid fear. But there's no denying the pure grin-inducing-fun-factor that the Buttkicker brings to home theatre.

Without wanting to lay it on too thick: the Buttkicker 2/Buttkicker BKA-1000-4 amplifier combination is the best thing you can do in your home theatre with your clothes on.

Why move the air when you can move the earth?

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