Buttkickers have arrived!

[Owen Bartley]

Well, I arrived home from work today to two large, and very heavy packages. My Buttkickers had arrived!

First of all, a huge thanks goes out to Sonnie and to Roman, for organizing the contest (The Ultimate Home Theater Giveaway), providing the awesome prize (not just one but TWO buttkickers), and for being especially accommodating with the shipping to me here in Toronto.

Tonight I'll deal with the installation portion of my thread, and then after I've had some time with them I'll move on to the review. So as I said, I had 2 boxes to open. The full kit box turned out to be many boxes, and packed quite well. When I got the goods out and lined up, I was pretty impressed with the size of the shakers themselves. the pics don't do justice, but they're almost the size of cantaloupes!

We looked at the install kit, and pondered a few options before turning the couch over to inspect the bottom. The couch is a recliner, so I figured it would be jammed full of levers and hinges underneath, but as it turned out there was a perfect space to mount a shaker, and there were already even holes (we had to drill one since they didn't line up right) in the metal frame. The packaged rubber damper feet were the perfect height to make up the difference after the shaker was mounted, and all in all I think I was pretty lucky with the minimal amount of work we had to do to have them integrate so well. We only had time to do one couch tonight, but I'll get the other one done on the weekend.

I had a few goof-ups, like plugging the splitter into the digital coax audio-in cable instead of the sub (it was dark and cramped behind my receiver) which thankfully didn't do any damage. Then when I did get it plugged in properly, I had some serious ground loop hum. After learning all about this to install my BFD, I just went the easy route and slapped a cheater plug on the amp, and everything worked great.

I found out that I can't turn the volume past half when the receiver is turned up close to reference level, or else I gott jagged white diagonal lines across the (CRT) TV. I'm guessing the amp, receiver, sub, TV, etc. are maybe drawing too much off the same circuit? It went away when I turned everything down a bit. I have the high filter set to around 60Hz, and the volume to about 10 - 11:00, just for the initial playing around. I used a few scenes from LOTR:FOTR to test with, mostly the cave troll, escape from Moria, and Balrog scenes. In short, I was impressed! The "hits" really matched the rumbling from the sub well. I'll get into more detail after I've had a chance to listen to some more, and tweak a bit, but my initial impression is that these are a really fun addition and I think I'm going to like them a lot.

More to come!

P.S. sorry for the crappy phone cam pics, it was handy and I was too lazy to find batteries for the real camera.

[Sonnie]

Looks like the installation was pretty painless, but I wonder about those jagged lines in your TV...

[buggers]

I have the BK1000 amp I use for my sealed RLP-18 sub and the amp when turned on would distort the tv, but now that I'm using a HD receiver and home grown antennae it doesn't seem to distort anymore.

[Owen Bartley]

I think on Sunday we're going to install the second buttkicker on the other couch, and I'll try to dial in the levels I want, and if it is still distorting how I like it, we might just run a new line up from the basement. Thankfully my dad is a very handy guy and it won't be too much of an ordeal. I'm fairly certain that when the sub and the BK amp are both doing their thing at high volume they're sucking too much power which causes the distortion.

Oh, speaking of the second install, would it be ok to splice my second connection (speaker wire) from the input cup of the first BK? I just don't really want to run another wire the full distance unless i have to. It would be about 6 feet if I splice, and closer to 20+ if I run a new one. They both come out of the same output on the amp either way.

[RSH]

Owen,

First let me comment on your install - very nice and innovative. I may take this approach and install the buttkickers in the chairs in which the Berkline do not use the BK-LFEs.

Second, you can run two buttkickers in parallel. The amp has enough juice to handle it.

[RazorX]

RSH wrote:

Second, you can run two buttkickers in parallel. The amp has enough juice to handle it.

That is how I have my two ButtKickers wired to the Buttkicker amp and it works great.

I found that setting the high cutoff to 40Hz the cleans up the ButtKicker sound a great deal and enables me to turn the output up on the amp. I could only get it up to ~1/2 way on the output dial when set above 40Hz before I started hearing distortion. I can crank it up to ~2/3 full volume (with the sub level set to +2 on the receiver) and not get any distortion . Distortion is probably the wrong word to use but it is the best I can come up with to describe it. It is really more like the vibration in the floor becomes audible and begins to sound like distortion. I don't think it is technically distortion but is the resonance in the floor reaching an audible level. While I can really crank the output volume on the amp and not get distortion, I usually run it a tick below 1/2 and this tends to blend the best with the sub.

I have mine mounted to the floor joists, as described in the owners manual, so this may or may not be consistent with what you see.

Very cool mounting BTW. These things really add to the movie watching experience.

[Owen Bartley]

Well I watched Transformers last night, and man do I love this Buttkicker! It didn't take long to get past the feeling of something weird going on, and get used to them as part of the experience. Pretty soon every giant robot punch, laser blast, and car crash was thumping my couch around and feeling totally natural. I still can't get over how well they blend in with my sub, and how every little thump from the sub had a thump from the BK too. Honestly, at some points I was trying to figure out what sensation was coming from which, and I couldn't tell.

The scene where one of the Transformers jumps and flips over a girl in the street (during the big streetfight) was just awesome. I was actually worried for my couch, and the BK, and the amp, but when I got up to check it, the amp was barely even warm. I did a little tweaking and actually turned the amp up to about half, and during really aggressive scenes I was still getting the white lines, but it was worth it!

As I said I'm hoping to get the second one installed on Sunday, so I may have to do some more tweaking when the load changes, but I am really loving these things. I can't wait to show them off over the holidays when friends and family are passing through.

PS, thanks for the compliments, and the wiring advice!

[spudbudy]

Hi gang can't seem to find an answer to my question after searching the forums on Butt Kickers so here it goes. I am in the process of getting a BFD on backorder currently and want to buy at least 1 or 2 Butt Kickers with the amp setup. Now I have a recliner sofa with a fixed seat in the middle however I am wondering if I could hook up the Butt Kickers in my crawl space below and attach them to the floor joist's does anyone have an opinion on this. the crawl space is very accessible with all of the rest of my speaker wires and cables run in there. any advice would be great as I am looking to do this before xmas.

[RSH]

You can, but imagine the whole floor shaking passing all the vibrations to the walls and ceiling? May not be the best approach. Now if you build a platform and install it on the kinetic isolators, it would be much better option- this way you would decouple the whole thing from the floor.

Also remember - to shake the floor or the platform you need much more power than just to shake the sofa (if the BK is attached to the frame of it). This may introduce a slight delay, which is undesirable. Attaching the buttkickers to the frame of the sofa will give you more localized and precise effect and will work better with your sub(s).

[spudbudy]

outstanding this is exactly what I needed to know now I can go and order the Butt Kickers and get this party started. Thanks

[Owen Bartley]

RSH wrote:

Attaching the buttkickers to the frame of the sofa will give you more localized and precise effect and will work better with your sub(s).

Yep, that approach is working great for me. There's no real discernible difference in timing between the BKs and the sub, they hit at exactly the same time. If at all possible I'd really recommend bolting them directly to your seat. I still need to get the little RS ground loop eliminator to see if that will cure my lines, and then do a bit more tweaking, but I'm loving these.

[goodsound]

Thanks for the post and installation photos. Like another above posted stated, you did a nice job with the install - quite innovative.