Buttkicker Amp smoked - a cautionary note, replacement ideas? - Page 2

3806? Man, that's OLD. The new ones are 3811's! That's like 5 generations old! Does it still use tubes?

I'd recommend you stop buying electronics until you are really, really done!

Well, it wasn't OLD when I bought it.

Tubes RULE! And they're a lot easier to replace than caps.

Wow....back on topic!

I may have to open up my dead buttkicker amp and see if I can get it running again. I have a working model I can compare it to. I was planning on replacing the buttkickers with some Behringer amps when I get to that point in my build.

Thought I would add my story to this thread at Big's advice.

I too had a buttkicker go up in smoke last year. I had bought two Buttkicker amps along with my order of HT seats. I was leaving them turned-on all the time since they automatically shutdown when no audio signal is present.

So last year, we were awaken in the middle of the night by our house's smoke detectors. The house was full of dark smoke, and the Fire Dept. found the source to be one of Buttkicker amp's. One of the fireman pulled the cover off the amp, and the entire power supply was melted:



The second amp, which was sitting next to it, was also damaged due to the heat from the smoldering fire. Luckily the smoldering was contained and nothing caught fire. The damage was simply smoke damage (block soot all over the HT) and a horrible, acrid smell of burnt electronics that lasted a number of weeks.

To the credit of the Guitammer Company and their CEO (whom I called and spoke to after the incident), they replaced both damaged amps free of charge despite them being both out of warranty.

I've since then added an automatic power on/off circuit that gets triggered by the AV Preprocessor, so that A/C is shutoff to the amps when the AV gear is not being used.



Hope this helps others on this forum

Curtis, did your amp serial number fall under the range below (recalled production run)?

I wasn't aware of a recall at the time on any of their amps. To their credit, they replaced both of my amps, free of charge, even though they were out of warranty. They even paid for all shipping fees.

So my experience with them was very different than yours

Here was the serial number tags of both of the amps that were returned:




So the format of the serial #s doesn't quite match up with the ones mentioned above

So Big - what amp did you end up going with as a replacement for the Aura Pros?

BIG, What about the Behringer iNUKE 1000DSP? I am thinking about using it for 8 bass shakers. It has a built in crossover so you set the filter to just send sub 60hz to the shakers.

Curious now, with all the subwoofer knowledge and offerings, diy and commercial, are buttkickers a thing of the past?

I don't need them in my HT, but this thread makes me wonder if they are still being considered or not for other people just starting out.


Sent from my 32GB iPhone4 using Tapatalk

Big,
Looking forward to this SW build - will you have a thread anywhere, so we can follow along?

If you got the room, you might consider going with dual opposed rather than one per box.

I too am curious. I picked up two buttkickers on the cheap and I was going to order a buttkicker amp to drive them. All the posts about fire issues with them have me more than a little worried.

I bought a used LFE kit (buttkicker amp + LFE 2 transducer) a while ago, played around with it, but the LFE is too big to fit properly under my chairs (Berkline 13175), so had to use the chair leg kit, which was less than optimal, so haven't used it recently. A couple weeks ago I purchased a used BK4-4 Buttkicker Advance transducer, which I will mount properly to the underside of a chair. If I like it, I'll probably buy two more so the front row of 3 seats will have them.

I have two THT LPs, so plenty of boom, but they only extend in room to about 17 Hz - plus my front row is on a concrete slab, so looking for the BKs to provide additional tactile response for LFE.

Still an experiment in progress though - all purchased used, so if it turns out I don't like it once "dialed in", I can always turn around and sell used and get my money back.