Making your own subkick?

jrech · Post by **jrech** » Sun Jul 03, 2011 8:13 am

Has anyone used the yamaha subkick for recording kick drums or djembes? Are they worth the $400? Has anyone attempted to build your own subkick mic? I saw some tutorials on youtube, and it looks easy enough, and it would certainly cost a lot less, but I am sure there is something I am over looking. It can't be that easy.

Thanks for all input ahead of time,

Have a great day,

J-

Dan Worley · Post by **Dan Worley** » Wed Jul 06, 2011 1:15 pm

Consider a kickport: http://www.kickport.com/kickport.html

Not a gimmick. Many drummers love 'em. Check out their ever-growing roster of artists: http://www.kickport.com/roster.html

Full disclosure: I do know someone involved in that company.

c-ya,

Dan Worley

burn em · Post by **burn em** » Thu Jul 14, 2011 12:03 pm

All a subkick is is a speaker with pins 1 and 2 of an XLR connected to it. The actual speaker and the shell would have differing effects on the tonal, transient and output level qualities. The shell not so much I would think. You should be able to build one for free from junk you already have lying around. Try it.

mrbillet · Post by **mrbillet** » Thu Jul 14, 2011 3:59 pm

burn em wrote:All a subkick is is a speaker with pins 1 and 2 of an XLR connected to it. The actual speaker and the shell would have differing effects on the tonal, transient and output level qualities. The shell not so much I would think. You should be able to build one for free from junk you already have lying around. Try it.

Don't forget to flip polarity since the driver is set push rather than be pushed. I think.

burn em · Post by **burn em** » Thu Jul 14, 2011 5:58 pm

You may be correct Mrbillet. then again... just swap pins 1 and 2 or flip the speaker around.

Got me thinking though. one side of a busted headphone might make a good "subkick" if it had sufficient pop filtering in front of it...

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