These custom-made headphones promise astonishing bass, as long as you don’t mind looking like a human dumbbell
You’ve got to love a pair of headphones called Ol’ Thumpy. They’re the latest brainchild of California drummer, headphone maker, Distrokid founder, and writer Philip Kaplan, aka Pud; they look absolutely ridiculous; and they’re actually quite clever.
Seen by our friends at PC gamerIf you don’t mind looking like a cartoon character who’s been hit with a barbell, Ol’ Thumpy delivers some of the most incredible bass you’ve ever heard.
That’s because those spheres contain a so-called Helmholtz resonator, which you sometimes find in bass reflex speaker cabinets: it vibrates at a specific frequency to produce a specific sound, in this case a 60 Hz bass note. It’s based on the same principle that produces a tone when you blow into the neck of a bottle, or the notes when you play an ocarina.
Ol’ Thumpy ain’t the only one… interesting design that Pud has created. If you are looking for headphones shaped like cephalopods or giant devil horns, Kaplan’s pud.com is also the place for them.
Forget the earplugs: we have Ear Puds
Pud’s Small Batch Headphones Here you’ll find Ol’ Thumpy alongside other eye-catching models such as the devil-horned Blasphemy, the four-ear Polycule for listening with friends, and the Pinnus “invisible” headphones (you might not be surprised to hear that these are actually somewhat visible).
They are all real products, and you will see Pud announcing them on Reddit in which he discusses the designs with headphones, which are far from silly novelties: for example, he explains how he modelled his Cephalopods on Bowers & Wilkins’ famous Nautilus speaker, and how the devil’s horns are stuffed with wool to reduce unwanted sound waves.
I’ll be honest: I would never wear a pair of Pud headphones in public, and probably not in private either. The Nautilus-inspired Cephalopods give me the creeps. But I love them anyway: they’re clearly a labor of love, and while they look utterly bizarre, there’s method to their madness – doubly so for Ol’ Thumpy.
As the name suggests, Pud’s Small Batch Headphones aren’t mass-produced: Pud makes each one by hand. You can sign up to be notified when each of his designs is available, and to be kept up to date on the beautiful/terrifying madness he comes up with next.
