Here is my bucket subwoofer. While being bored during some
down time at work, I looked for new DIY project and stumbled up this:
http://www.transcendentsound.com/Transcendent/Subwoofer.html
A small subwoofer using a 5 gallon bucket as an enclosure, awesome right?
So I gave it a shot; made some adjustments along the way and
learned a good bit. Overall it was fun, but not without a few frustrations. I
might have to try the sump sub next.:
http://www.avsforum.com/forum/155-diy-speakers-subs/1441212-sump-basin-subwoofer-macgyver-style.html
AND http://www.avsforum.com/forum/155-diy-speakers-subs/1533762-diy-build-sumpsub-ported-passive-subwoofer.html
I started off with just a $3 Home Depot bucket and a dream.
I decided to try and port this one, but I also wanted to give myself an easy out just in case I totally screwed up. So I integrated a way to close off the port and seal up the enclosure.
Porting it seems to have worked
well enough. From my fuzzy math it should be tuned to about 30hz. Did that actually happen? Probably not. See the test results at the end.
Concrete is poured in, about 1.5 inches deep and left to dry for a few days
Attaching the wood baffle for the driver, this is where I
learned that these types of buckets are near impossible to actual glue anything
to. Polypropylene and Polyethylene low energy or inert or something else all sciency
so 3M made an expensive magic glue to work on them.
Thank God for screws then. When the cut out was made for the woofer, a lot of tension was taken off the bottom of the bucket which caused the left over "lip" that I was trying to mount the baffle to, to angle into the bucket. The glue and screws were an attempt to pull that lip back up and get a secure mounting surface.
Painting time. I used truck bed liner, which also doesn't stick very well. But once it cures its tough enough to not flake off immediately. Never mind the nearly dead grass, this is California and if you have green grass right now then F you.
Cheap, crappy speaker terminals form Radio Shack. Never again.
Mounting the woofer and putting some stuffing in. A whole bunch more as added just after this picture
AND NOW IT'S DONE!!!!!111
Since the subwoofer enclosure is made of a bucket, I needed some where or someway to mount the BASH 300S plate amp. So since we are working with plastics, I found a handing file box at Staples that suited the amp well enough.
The future amp box
Drilling some pretty pretty air vent holes. I used a checker board pattern to make them nice and even-ish
Cut out for the amp done
AND NOW THAT'S DONE TOO!!!1
So how did this thing actually turn out?
From just listening to music and watching a few movies, it definitely provides some kick and sounds pretty alright to me. Much louder than the Dayton Sub-800 that I normally have on all the time; and I think it might be darn close to besting the Dayton Sub-1200. Getting into more technical understanding on how well it blends or transient response and all that, Im not the best judge. I'm a car audio bass head who rolls around with an 18 in the back of my Ford Fusion so you can see where my priorities lie.
But I did take some in room responses so at least we can see a little bit of the technical results. So check these out. As a note, I'm still having trouble with REW, Dayton UMM 6 and my PC getting a consistent overall volume. You'll note that the graphs are centered around the 100 db mark, just prior to these testings, I was getting results centered around 80 db. Graphs look identical, just centered at the wrong point.
Ported vs Sealed response. Not a huge difference, but audible for sure. Ported open is louder accross the usable spectrum. My room has clean peak at 100hz and that showed in all subs tested.
Bucket Sub vs Dayton Sub-1200. This was most supriseing. The bucket sub is louder than the Dayton from 50hz to 100hz and equal from 50hz to 35hz where the Bucket sub gets louder again.
A few addition images of other sub tests can be seen below
http://imgur.com/a/NqKOr
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