14 DAY TRIAL // So, what does a man do when he can't find bass systems large enough? That's right, such a man will go DIY (DoItYourself) and build gear to meet the needs. Sometimes, the quality is better than factory-made equipment; after all, it's a hand-made piece of gear; other times, the costs are so big that only thinking of starting such a project makes people dizzy. Nevertheless, people are DIY -ing permanently and some of them even get it in the small business with some projects.
One of the Positron.org people has been in the team that build the Bose Wavecannon, a bass enclosure 12feet long and 8" in diameter but this time he knew he needed much more to cover the 3,500 square feet he was living in. Therefore, ideas began to flow and a larger cannon design was quickly catching contour.
The main idea was concentrated on using as much of the bass driver energy as possible, in order to obtain a maximum of efficiency from the concept gear. Remember, there was quite some room to cover! First of all, the design and engineering team found out that for an even distribution of the waves, the driver had to be placed at about 1/3 the total length of the bass tube so that the back-generated waves go in approximately the same phase as the front ones and thus the drive works "in full throttle". For the first edition of the cannon, the three men used low-end speakers and ran manually a handful of tests just to see how the contraption responds to actual working conditions. The results were pretty encouraging so they went for the real thing!
First of all, they changed the bass driver and replaced the crappy one with an excellent Adire Tempest 15 handling 800W and moving 2.7 l of air in its 16.4 mm "trip". Then there was a dire need for the proper enclosure and the guys decided that a 20', 15" diameter tube could do the job. Next, there was the Madisound KG-5230 Plate amp capable of blasting 300W. Yet the producers of the bass cannon claim they never cranked it up to the max...
Flanges and flypoints were added so the whole monster could be hanged from the ceiling and the whole thing got a nice color spray and industrial-look safety stripes just to make it look as cool as it was itself; it was ready and tested; it has done its job with outstanding results as this time, the huge 3,500 sqft garage was full of tremors and a lot of bass was deployed, again, from under 300W of raw power.
The overall cost of the materials was estimated at around $400 (according to the "project manager" Holly Gates) and even if at this time the bass cannon has been taken apart (due to Holly living in an apartment now) the kit for the DIY Bass Cannon can be purchased by contacting Positron.org.
Wanna place your neighbors under bass bombardment? It's now possible: you just have to be able to accommodate the 20 feet-long barrel!
