Bucket Sub Revisited

I know Ed the inventor says you need at least 300 watts for the two bucket subs but lately I've tried them with a 100 watt plate amp which I found to be sufficient depending on the type of music. Ed rocks out at insane levels and no doubt needs the extra power. With two bucket subs ( 8 ohm Peerless woofers ) connected in parallel you'll get a 4 ohm load for a single plate amp and extract it's maximum output.


For me in the small room the stereo is in (guessing 10' X 12') I use a pair of KLH 22A speakers running on a Lafayette LA-375 amp at about 25 WPC and either due to room issues or the efficiency of the KLH speakers one sub is not enough for all types of music. When I play more modern music with lots of bass is usually when the sub runs out of steam.

I know there's some room issues as in the center where I sit the bass is lower, but if I walk towards the sub or the corners the bass is louder.

Have a topic started on building a second one.
 
For me in the small room the stereo is in (guessing 10' X 12') I use a pair of KLH 22A speakers running on a Lafayette LA-375 amp at about 25 WPC and either due to room issues or the efficiency of the KLH speakers one sub is not enough for all types of music. When I play more modern music with lots of bass is usually when the sub runs out of steam.

I know there's some room issues as in the center where I sit the bass is lower, but if I walk towards the sub or the corners the bass is louder.

Have a topic started on building a second one.

Are you speaking of the bucket subs or another sub? If you're using one bucket sub they do far better in pairs.
 
Yes the bucket sub.

Just finished the second one and am waiting for the silicone to set so I can put it in my room.

Wouldnt mind eventually building two more and doing a series parallel arrangement so they can run on one amp. Put one in each corner.

Plus the first bucket didn't have quite 2" of concrete in it. Maybe like 1 1/2".

That BASH amp sure does well driving the one bucket sub.
 
Had a chance to play around with the second bucket sub today and it made a huge difference.

The bass is more balanced across the whole room.

Had to turn the plate amp gain down so I added a resistor to the input so the level control wouldn't be so close to zero and so I had more fine control over the gain. The pass through output is connected as normal so that I still have a full gain input if necessary.
 
Switching things around keeps me entertained so now the buckets are supporting these OB Lowthers. The woofers are good to 40hz so the buckets pick up from there.

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You're welcome.

So far I'm enjoying the second one as it makes both subs sort of disappear and I just hear the bass under 70Hz as though the mains were the ones producing it.

Now in the old doublewide which was built in 76 it had wood paneling so one sub was fine.

Suppose that the drywall in the current place absorbs some of the bass perhaps.
 
Definitely, although in the other trailer I had quite good results with just one and in this trailer it has taken two to get the same if not slightly better quality.
 
The inventor says you need at least 300 watts to power both which means a single plate amp of 300 watts powering a pair of these 8 ohm speakers will get you there. Doubling up the connections to a plate amp gives max power as the load goes from 8 ohms to 4 ohms. Experimenting with a lower power plate amp I've found that the Yung SD100 ( 100 watts ) suits my needs. The SD100 is pretty basic and not very large. I always mount my plate amps in their own enclosures which gives one a lot more options. The SD100 has no speaker level connections which is ok as I always use line level feeding it from a preamp. For music I now prefer the Yung SD100 to the SD300. It sells for $99 at PE but it's often on sale.

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Very nice.

I too use line level to my plate amp fed from a two way 70Hz 24 dB/octave active crossover.

Listening I've now been able to turn it up loud enough to where the Lafayette LA-375 amp starts to distort and the subs are still hanging in there quite well.

I've noticed two bucket subs make it sound like the KLH 22A speakers are producing the bass given the subs blend in so well.

For me 100 watts would be too low as my speakers aren't all too efficient.

Now I do have a single 15" Jensen and three tweeters from an Emerson console and if I find another set of the same speakers I might have cabinets made for them and enjoy great sound with efficient speakers or maybe try open baffle.

Would still use the subs.
 
Here's a dumb one from a newbie: Is everyone using plastic 5 gallon drums, wouldn't metal have less "flex"?
 
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From what I gathered he is more along the lines of build exactly as per the instructions including the recommended amplifier.
 
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