When you play your drums, do you ever wish that you could feel and hear your kick drum better, as if you were onstage at a big gig with giant monitors down by your side or behind you? Do you play on an electronic drum kit and wish it felt a bit more like an acoustic kit? If you said yes to either of those questions, then you should get yourself a Pearl Throne Thumper. The Throne Thumper brings silent low end and bass into your seat, which makes it as if you have a giant 18″ speaker right behind you cranked up to 11. It is fantastic!
The company Buttkicker has been around for a long time making versions of this product for drummers and they have recently joined forces with the famed drum company Pearl. Now getting one of these amazing pieces of must-have gear easier than ever.
How It Works
The idea behind the Throne Thumper is to use an audio signal (mainly anything with low end like kick drums, floor toms, bass guitar, or keys) to drive a low-frequency transducer. Inside the housing that you connect to your drum throne is a piston suspended in a magnetic coil. The audio signal fluctuates the magnetic coil, which then drives the piston. In simpler terms, when you kick your kick drum, the signal gets sent into the Throne Thumper and vibrates your seat. It feels as though there is a giant monitor speaker behind you, but you don’t hear it; you feel it! It is perfect for those of you who have electronic kits at home, because it gives you a more acoustic drum “feel,” which can be lost when playing electronic drums through headphones.
What is even better is playing on acoustic drums in a loud live situation. You can send a mix of the drums, bass guitar, keys, and anything else you want to feel more of, so you don’t have to play as hard. To me, this is extremely important. Overplaying because you can’t hear or feel your drums just sets you up for a bad or at least tough experience. You want to play the music with touch and dexterity, but instead you are fighting just to hear yourself. That can be a total drag and not fun, and music, as we all know, is supposed to be fun.
Very Easy to Use
The Throne Thumper is very easy to use and set up, and it comes with everything you need right out of the box. You get the transducer, which you simply connect to your throne post, a 200-watt amp used to get the signal to the transducer, and the three necessary cables.
First, you connect the transducer to the throne with the gold connectors pointing up. Then, connect the black and red speaker cable with the banana plug into the back of the amp. The other end of the cables connect to the gold connectors on the transducer. After that, you can plug the amp in. The last thing is to get the signal to the amp and your seat; the unit comes with a 1/4″ instrument cable. For those of you with electronic drum kits, like the Roland TD-15 that only has stereo outputs, just connect from the mono output of the TD-15 directly into the amp, and you are good to go. It is good to note that because you are sending the whole kit to the Throne Thumper rather than an individual part of the drum kit, you will feel the floor toms and anything else that has low end. This is usually the best way to use the unit in my opinion — even if you use it with an electronic drum kit like the Roland TD-30, which has individual outputs for the whole kit.
To use the Throne Thumper with an acoustic drum kit requires a little more work, but even that is very simple. In a live situation, you will need to get a mix from the monitor board. This is the best way to get the most out of the Throne Thumper because you can have the monitor engineer send you bass guitar, keyboards, or anything else you want! You will really feel the band when it is like this. If you are not able to get a mix, then you can just send the kick drum directly into the amp. At least you will have the most important drum in your Throne Thumper. You will most likely need to get an adapter that goes from XLR to 1/4″ like the Hosa PXF105, but those are very inexpensive and always handy to have around anyway.
Wrap Up
The Throne Thumper makes it fun and easy to feel your drums, and I think it is a must-have piece of gear.
