ButtKicker BK-LFE Low Frequency Effects System

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!

I am not sure you can make a comparison between the two products. What must seem like two different products that in essence do the same thing to some, turns out to be two products that approach the idea of tactile transducing from two different design goals. The Clark is if anything, more refined, providing fast response throughout the frequency range it was designed to reproduce. The Buttkicker could best be described as brutal, slaming home its intended effect. My recommendation is to buy both to mix and match under a platform or below a floor to get the best of both worlds.**EDIT**A year or more later and I have almost retired the BK-LFE. I could never get it to stop bottoming out on extreme lfe movie segments. And when it bottoms out you know it! ...Very distracting and what I considered untenable. Turning the amp down only dimished the effect to the point where it became a negligible tactile sensation at best. On the other hand, I have nothing but praise for the Buttkicker amp! I started experimenting with it using one and now have it powering two Clark Synthesis Platinums, (CSPs) in parallel and WOW...this works in spades. Yes, a CSP is twise the money but is a no compromise piece of work. Is it worth twice the money? Well, when one sort of works some of the time and not well the rest of the time and the other offers endless effect that you can dial in to suit, it all comes down to budget. Buy the Buttkicker LFE but be prepared to adjust your expectations, not the equipment.

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:FILTERCLASS ABBUTTKICKER 1000watt8 AWG (30A fused at the battery)A SOCKET SETCONTACT ADHESIVEICEDARK 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