University of Wisconsin Engineering Students Build Absurdly Huge Bass Cannon & Let It Kick It

University of Wisconsin engineering students built an absurdly huge real life ‘bass cannon’, aka the Giant Speaker, for the UW-Madison Engineering Expo.

“The speaker works best in the 5Hz – 50hz range,” they note. “The video does no justice for the vibration this thing produces. We found the resonant frequency of the building it was in which caused “annoyance” for people several floors above us in the opposite side of the building.”

In this context, ‘annoyance’ probably translates to ‘loss of bowel control’.

Inspiration came from Doc Brown’s speaker in Back to the Future.

Here’s a video of the Giant Speaker in action:

This thing looks awesome – but we would love to see twisted purposes musicians could put this thing to.

The giant sub was built by a team of PhD students in electrical and mechanical engineering, as a fun side project on a limited budget.

The cone is made of polycarbonate and is 6 feet in diameter. The cabinet is 8ft x 8ft x 2ft or 128 cubic feet. Everything was custom made by the team, voice coil, magnet assembly, cone, surround, etc. Peak electrical draw is ~6kW.

A detailed history of the construction process may be found at the Ludois Labs site.

via hackaday

28 thoughts on “University of Wisconsin Engineering Students Build Absurdly Huge Bass Cannon & Let It Kick It”

  2. Cool! Now rappers and guys that like to roll on pimped out dubs will have to buy a box delivery truck or even a Semi tractor/trailer to put this sub into so they can roll with it. 128 cubic feet! No way that will fit in an impala or a pickup truck!
    6000 watts! Holy Schnikey! They will need a separate AC generator just to power this thing!

    1. Dude. My uncles 06 Tahoe is running 4 300’s (Altenators) and 2 extra batts for 9,000 watts that pushes 2 Level 5 AQ 18’…. He doesn’t. Need a generator for it either.. Hahahaha are your bass guy bro?

      1. And he really NEEDS this much power why? What a ridiculous waste of money and most likely a major pain in the ass for anyone within two city blocks of his rolling fartmobile

  18. I seem to recall a story of early 20th century New York. There seemed to be an
    earthquake in a section of the city that was eventually traced to a contraption attached to a column of
    in the basement of a building occupied by Nicola Tesla. Hmmmmm.
    I also remember an article in a trade publication in the early 80s about someone who built a cabinet
    around an EV 30 inch woofer that you could physically walk around in. I’m sure it wouldn’t do justice
    to whatever Frankenstein you guys have created, but it was cool just thinking about walking around
    inside a speaker cabinet. Just chattin’
    Thanx,
    Steve Russian

  22. where do i get one of these i run a 64k out door sound system that consists of m175 subs in custom made boxes and turbo sound and peavey tops what is the lowest recorded frequency you managed to pick up or feel as my lowest on my system is 12 hrtz at 0.5db per meter feeding 5.6kw into her running alot of different test to tune the boxes properly at first but now it is good

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