Well I got a spare half an hour for a temporary hook up and test so here we go.
The only amp I had available was one side of my precious Soundstream mono blocks which will undoubtedly not be a permanent fixture.
One problem with using this amp is the lack of a volume control and built in pre amp it's really designed to be driven with something with a much better output than a soundcard. This reduces the maximum output from this beast considerably.
There wasn't enough room under the chair to mount the shaker anywhere other than to one side and this unfortunately feels quite noticeable. So a better mounting solution or two shakers is really necessary for the best feel.
So does it work...
In a word yes.
I don't have a butt kicker to compare it with but I would say two of these would be more than enough for even the craziest amongst us and still a LOT cheaper if you can find a reasonably priced amp.
Finding the right amp is the key. For settings I used the sub output on the pc then selected 5.1 with bass management in my realtek sound settings. I deselected rear and centre speaker as my headphones are only stereo and this works pretty darn well. If you select stereo the sub output gets disabled with the realtek system, others may be different. The low pass filter built into the pc/soundcard proved perfectly adequate. Noise is very minimal but vibration is not.
You can feel the engine rumble and the bullets, not bad for half an hours work. The bullets could be sharper but I'm sure another one would sort that out. The worst thing is when you get a message on messenger and it sends a shiver up your spine. lol
Anyway hope some of you found my little experiment interesting.
Cheers
Ben