Bass Tubes Are BACK!
Way back in the mists of time when your daddy had less grey hair or maybe even none, I was working in, rather than writing about car audio. There was a company that had sold literally every single owner of a cassette deck in Great Britain a device called the Alsopp 3 cleaner cassette. This was a cassette tape shell, filled with cogwheels. In the centre gap position was a little piece of plastic, where you clipped a small chod of compressed white felt. When you pressed play, all the little cog wheels went round and round, with a cam inside that served to make the little piece of felt to go backwards and forwards. With a squirt of isopropyl alcohol, This was a truly magical device. The first time you ever used it, the little piece of felt would go grey, so much grime had it removed from your playback head!
Along with another cassette shell filled with electronics to demagnetise your playback head, you would have the complete maintenance kit. The difference before and after cleaning the oxide from your playback head was biblical. The very much more expensive demagnetising cassette, was a far rarer thing to own. However, literally everybody who could breathe and had a cassette deck purchased a cassette cleaner from Allsop 3. Hilariously, As I write, I can recall that they also tried to make one for compact discs, that washed only from the inside to the edge, as per CD thingy instructions.
This company sold so incredibly many of these cheap devices, that they had the money to become the distributor of millionaire grade hi-fi equipment for the home. The really scary posh stuff. They also became the distributor for Rockford Fosgate car audio equipment in the UK.
Now here is a fact I never told anybody. My very first job in car audio, was with the brother-in-law of the bloke who had all that success with Allsopp 3. They were golfing buddies. I was working for a pro audio distributor company as a lowly rep for their cheap stuff into shops and we sold DENON pro kit. So, using their professional account at Stirling audio, I purchased some car audio equipment. A CD tuner and six amplifiers. The head unit cost me £300 and retailed for four figures. In car CD players are now seen as passé and can be had dirt cheap. But for back then this was intense and high-tech. I wanted to the flashiest cables to plug it altogether with, which were by Esoteric Audio, under their StreetWires brand. This gear was so posh and pretty and flash that installers would align the cables up such that all the logos were in the same direction and the writing was lined up. There were literally dozens of clippits, snappits, crimps and rings. By the time we had completed my order for my mega system, Robert Drake had worked out that I knew more about this stuff than he did and offered me a job.
As American Auto Sounds, we tried to compete with the big guys, I was in the office and we had a rep. One of the products that they also distributed, was a brand called Collins bass tubes. I had heard a big one in a shop on the Tottenham Court Road, (which also dates me) and it bloody rumbled. They sold for an absurd margin, with a quite chewy retail price. When they got blown up as people inevitably tried to put ever yet more power in because they were so much fun, there was no warranty assessment. They were so bloody cheap, that the dead ones were slung in a shed and a replacement posted out without quibble.
The simple fact is, that spherical and by inference, cylindrical loudspeaker enclosures, have an absolutely bloody enormous physical benefit. For unless they are as rigid as metal (See what I did there? The QB8 is made of quarter inch thick Aluminium) every slab-sided enclosure of normal design will be subject to some panel flex. A sphere or a cylinder has the pressure from the loudspeaker within, working upon it in all directions evenly. So instead of flexing between the held edges of each panel, the entire cylinder has to literally inflate to experience any panel flex. What is this translates to, is all the energy being concentrated up and down the tube. Or in the case of the famous glass goldfish bowl loudspeakers, only out the front.
The most famous brand of bass tube uses porting that is directed out of the same end as the driven speaker. What Kicker have done is way more badass!
First, the really big slice of Kicker DNA is the passive bass radiator or PBR. This is a speaker cone without a magnet and coil on its bottom. It allows the enclosure to breathe like a ported enclosure but without the tuning constraints that brings. So as well as joining in with the CompR loudspeaker with the big bad wattage ceramic magnet motor on its arse, the wibbly wobbly cone on the opposite end of the Kicker bass tube, serves to dramatically increase output whilst still keeping with the ability to emulate the bass signal – no matter how low. All the way to the limit of wobbliness of these two loudspeaker products.
Then, Kicker are seriously generous with ironmongery to mount this little tube. Metal work is expensive. Yet you get three options. All the other makers gave you a little steel rail and a flipping strap! This product has Brass bushings sunk into the fabric of the body with great precision, to fit all the brackets provided. The really cool option is upright. This means that you can boundary-pressure load the output. Depending on the surface and its rigidity, you can get a little bit of that bass-is-kind-of-like-an-explosion effect and get even more output.
With double stitched surrounds and beefy grille bars, this new Kicker bass tube really looks the part and belts deep clean lows. I tried the TB10.
Oh and it is waterproof too…. What’s not to like?