Right now, the guys in the desks next to me are hating me. Sure, my chair is rocking to a Hellogoodbye bassline and probably annoying them, but I sense a tinge of jealousy in the air, too. See, I just hooked up the ButtKicker Gamer to my desk chair this afternoon, and it’s getting a rigorous workout right now.

When a subwoofer product like this comes through the office, the Captain knows where to turn. I used to be that guy that had two twelve-inch 1000-watt subwoofers in the trunk of my car. For those of you unfamiliar with stereos, that’s WAY more than most home stereos and more than enough to set off car alarms as I drove down the street. As I got older and my hearing started to deteriorate (rather rapidly), I decided it was time to ditch the big trunk bumps in favor of a more reasonable stereo solution. That isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy a good loud and pounding bassline anymore, though, because I certainly do. My stereo at home kicks a good deal of ass, but it’s still nothing compared to what I used to have in my car. Now with the ButtKicker Gamer transducer, there’s a reasonably priced solution that won’t shred your inner-ear or wake the neighbors.

A transducer, for the uninitiated, is a device that essentially translates low frequency sound that would normally be sent to a subwoofer into linear vibrations. When you bolt the ButtKicker Gamer onto your standard desk chair (any kind that has a central support pole), it basically shakes your chair around at the same frequency that the bass would be sounding at. Audible bass, the kind that wakes neighbors and infuriates parents, is translated into, quite literally, a body shaking vibration. Once I got the unit attached to the chair and the included amplifier, then made the necessary connections to my PC, it was on.

I started with the obvious choice – Half Life 2. I loaded up Lost Coast and let the bullets fly. The ButtKicker immediately proved it prowess and gave me a suitable pounding. Firing a shotgun or rocket launcher becomes a visceral and tactile experience that any gamer could love. Before the proper adjustments were made to the amplifiers low and high pass filters, some effects like voices and footsteps caused a little more rumble than we’d like. The low and high pass filters essentially put a top and bottom frequency maximum onto the rumble so that you won’t get any unwanted background rumblings. After a few seconds of fiddling with the knobs, it was pretty much dialed in. There’s enough flexibility built in to the settings to accommodate different audio sources, but the controls are simple enough to get it set up within a short time of switching sources.

After trying the unit out with a couple of games (it worked amazingly with Half Life 2, Flight Simulator, and even some old GameTap games), I decided to test it out with some music and movies. I threw some tunes from a bunch of different genres at this thing, and it pretty much hit it out of the park every time. From Sublime to Miles Davis to Pearl Jam to Aesop Rock, this thing adds a great new layer to anything you listen to. As far as the movie experience goes, you can expect more of the same. I found that when I popped in Casino Royale, I had to turn the unit down a little more than with games and music in order to avoid unwanted background vibrations, but explosions and crescendos still sent the chair rocking.

I found that the ButtKicker Gamer worked best when I used it with headphones. Especially if you’re like me and really want to crank it up, it can get a little loud. Having headphones on eliminates this problem for the user, but it kind of defeats the purpose of a silent bass unit when it vibrates loud enough to hear it from the next room. Another thing to note is that it doesn’t provide the same sensation that a superb subwoofer delivers. Cranking a big 12”+ woofer will give you vibrations that you can feel in your chest (and perhaps your skull if you turn it up loud enough), but the ButtKicker really only shakes your chair. You’ll feel it in your back and the armrests, but the feeling of pounding in your chest just isn’t there. Ideally, this should be added to an already killer stereo system to get the pinnacle auditory experience, but it’ll enhance anything you add it to.

All in all, you’re simply not going to find another bass device that gives this kind of performance for this price. It’s got frequency response all the way down to 10Hz, runs at 2 ohms, and comes with its own amplifier and all the cabling you’ll need. Setup is a breeze and the performance is nothing short of stellar. The highest levels of rumble here would likely be more than most people could handle if it was coming out of a speaker, but the effect of the transducer allows you to really take it to the extreme without damaging your ears or making your neighbors want to do that thing with the flaming bag of dog crap again. The ButtKicker Gamer will do just what it promises and kick your ass all over the place – in a good way.