Hooking Up Bass Shakers
This section shows my bass
shaker
setup. I have two subwoofer amps, each driving three bass shakers.
For those not familiar with
bass
shakers, they are vibration transducers. They work in the same manner
as speakers, with an important difference: speakers are designed to
vibrate air; bass shakers are designed to vibrate solid objects.
Mounting The Shakers
This is a 50-watt
bass shaker. It's
about 6 inches in diameter.
This is the
business end. This side
mounts to whatever you want to shake. The brown circle is a cork pad.
The four shakers
mounted on the
underside of the seat platform.
This shot shows
the shakers wired up.
The seat platform is tilted up 90 degrees and not in its final resting
place.
The seat platform
in place.
Bass shaker under
the wheel shelf. This shaker adds to the vibrations from the wheel's
force feedback.
Bass shaker under
the foot platform. This shaker adds footwell vibration. The connector
in the upper left is a 1/4" phone jack (guitar jack), so I can easily
remove the foot platform.
Volume controls
for the wheel shelf and foot platform shakers. I wanted to be able to
control the volume of these two shakers separately from the four under
the seat platform.
Wiring The Shakers
As mentioned above, the
shakers are
driven by subwoofer amps. Bass shakers do not like high frequencies
(they overheat), so they must be driven with a subwoofer amp, or a
full-range amp with a low-pass filter. Each shaker has an impedance of
four ohms. Connecting each pair in series results in a total impedance
of eight ohms. The shakers can also be connected in parallel, but this
would give a total impedance of two ohms, which is too low for most
amps to drive. The following photos show how to hook up a mono pair of
shakers. If you want stereo, you'll need a stereo amp, or two mono
subwoofer amps. Most sub amps are mono.
This is the front
panel of the
120-watt subwoofer amp I use. My setup has two of these for stereo.
Note arrows pointing to inputs.
This is the back
of the subwoofer
amp. The leads connect to the bass shakers.
The subwoofer amps are driven
by the
output of the computer's soundcard. The soundcard's front speaker
output is split with a Y-cable to send the signal both to the subwoofer
amps (for the shakers) and the regular speaker amp.
Two Y-cables are used. Y-cable
#1
splits the soundcard's front speaker output into two signals. Y-cable
#2 sends the signal to the subwoofer amps. For a one-amp (mono) setup,
both RCA plugs connect to the subwoofer amp's left and right inputs.
For a two-amp setup (stereo), the white RCA plug goes to the left sub
amp, and the red RCA plug goes to the right sub amp.
Connection from
soundcard to
subwoofer amp.
This is Y-cable #1. It has a
stereo
1/8" plug on one end, and two stereo 1/8" jacks on the other.
Y-cable #1.
This is Y-cable #2. It has a
stereo
1/8" plug on one end, and two RCA plugs on the other.
Y-cable #2.
This is the connection from
the sub
amp to the shakers. The shakers under the seat platform are wired in
series, and in parallel with the shaker under the wheel shelf/foot
platform.
Connection from
subwoofer output to
bass shakers.
The two subwoofer amps are
mounted in the bottom of my keyboard stand.
Twin
subwoofer amps mounted in keyboard stand.
I used soft rubber doughnuts
to isolate the monitor shelf from the
frame so the bass shakers wouldn't shake the monitor. The shelf hangs
from the fitting on the frame.
Monitor shelf isolation. The shelf
hangs from the fitting on the frame.
The lower shelf is the wheel shelf, which is not isolated.
I also isolated the seat
platform from the frame to reduce vibration
transfer to the frame.
Seat platform isolation. Note black
rubber between frame and platform.
