you know when your phone rings and you also feel if vibrate? when you press your screen and you feel a little click? or your trackpad on your macbook pro and you feel that little bit of tactile feedback?

well… imaging a giant version of that… driven by a 1900 watt amplifier!

these haptics are just for feel only. no audible sound. you may be more familiar with this sensation at the movies. a large crash and you feel your seat and floor shake. the theatre also has big bass on it’s sound system, but the haptic feedback coupled with a great sound system helps to immerse you in the movie experience.

you can also buy this haptic experience for your own home theatre or gaming system. you can attach them to couches, gaming chairs – almost anything that you want to shake.

what i use this system for is live bass. i have been a church musician for years and most of that time i have used a regular amplified speaker. but lately, i have been helping at a church that only uses in ear monitors. as a bass player, these tiny in ear speakers severely limit the bass experience i have been used to. bass players are used to “pushing air” and these tiny in ears just don’t cut it for me. a drummer could equate the experience as switching from a normal kit to electronic drums with a tiny monitor. it’s not the same dynamic. (on a side note, check out this bass mute i made)

so i found a way, years ago, to add to the in ear experience. i’ve added a haptic to my set up!

the bass is a low frequency generator. the string vibrates and the movement of this vibration is amplified and sent to speakers where you can not only hear the instrument, but feel it as well. bass speakers can literally push the sound out to you. you can also send this frequency to the haptic and if you are standing on it, you can feel the bass that you are making. that, combined with the upper levels of frequencies that are being heard through the in ear monitors, makes the experience seem like you are plugged into a giant, large stack amplifier. it’s a great experience. these days, you can even get a smaller haptic sensation that can be worn on the back, attached to your strap. or worn by anyone that wants to really FEEL the bass.

for years, i have used a buttkicker concert haptic transducer 2-ohm stable 1500 watt max, driven by the buttkicker BKA-1000-N high output transducer amplifier capable of 1900 watts in bridged mode. this thing is built like a tank. a very simple concept. basically a very large magnet only portion of a large bass subwoofer without the speaker cone.

in the past i have mounted the transducer to a platform, but in recent years, i’ve made a smalled bracket that i can clamp to a stage to allow the whole stage to vibrate. the stage i currently have it clamped to is 4×8 ft.

i began to have a problem with it cutting out while playing live. so i took it to the shop to see what was going on. i started with the transducer.

seems like this transducer was made by eminence.

let’s see the other side.

i want to also add that i had opened this thing once before. i was getting a clank and seemed the inside part had broken free from it’s adhesive to the finned outer cooling shell, so i had applied some white lithium grease to the inner slug and resealed it with some flooring adhesive. so this time, opening it took quite a strugge. you can see where i had scratched off a lot of the adhesive. i didn’t want to reopen this ever again and did a great job of resealing it. too good… i also wanted to take another look at the wiring to make sure nothing was exposed from the vibrations. i cleaned this up, but did not get an after photo.

at this point, i moved on to the amplifier.

i opened it up and heard some buzzing. check out the following video of what it was doing.

after doing some searching, i heard that there was someone i could contact and sent an email to marvin clamme the director of research for the guitammer company with everything i had found to get some sort of help in solving this problem. i took notes and implemented his suggestions. and one of his seemingly minor suggestions turned out to be the solution to my problem. mr. marvin was very responsive to my emails and i am grateful for his willingness to help. it seems that many others in various forums found mr. marvin to be extremely helpful. if you are reading this, thanks again, mr. marvin.

he had suggested taking a closer look at some of the soldering and maybe revisit some of the solder points. a few looked like they needed some attention, but turned out not to make any difference afterwards.

i don’t think any of this happened from the factory. mr. marvin’s advice was from one tech to another. a good practice to revisit what could be some corrosion that could have happened at anytime during the period that i had been using this.

i had been using a large gauge wire between the amplifier and the transducer. i had been using about 20 foot and i felt that it may be better to cut that distance in half and thats when i found my problem…

this copper was heavily corroded. i think it must have been cheaply shielded. that combined with the churches fog machine – i wonder if that contributed to it corroding so bad. any of you have any experience with that?

so i dug around to see what i had and found a much better solution. heavy gauge actual speaker wire.

i cleaned up the transducer from all the old adhesive.

then added some red “n” tacky lithium complex grease to the sliding portion. this is a heavy duty grease used in many agricultural and industrial applications and is highly tacky and stable and won’t leak out and will stay in place.

this kicker is now working as intended – it’s a great feature for bass players if you haven’t yet tried one.

thanks for looking over my shoulder. can i help you with anthing? if so, contact me here.