Bass Egg, the speaker cone is your boat

Meet Cameron Hitchcock, and Adam McPherson. As you can tell they aren't your typical gray flannel corporate suits. Driven and focused, with an energetic enthusiasm that can only come from tech driven twenty somethings. They wear me out just being around them. Combined with their other partners Johnathan Bouchlas, and Joe Floyd they are the founders of Bass Egg.

Lets go back in time just a very few months ago. Cameron's dad is a pilot, and while on a layover in China he spots a small gadget, buys it, and on his return gives it to Cameron. This is a low power version of what Bass Egg would become. Replaceable batteries, only a 1/8 headphone jack for input, and a sticky pad to hold it on the surface which quickly becomes not sticky. Cameron shows it to a friend, and the more they talk about it, the more excited they get. What if this had more power? How about using a USB memory stick, or a micro SD card. We could add a FM radio, It needs to look cool, maybe with a touch screen and LEDs. And thus starts the next ninety days with many sleepless nights.

Tickets to China are bought. Translators are hired and they are now knocking on factory doors in central China. People told them they were crazy, you can't do it that way until they found the right manufacturer. Product gets concepted, circuit boards are designed, changes are made, tests are done, and all of a sudden, still within the same ninety day window cases of Bass Egg product are now sitting on the floor in West Palm Beach. A website is started, and now how do we show off the product?

The answer is the Palm Beach boat show. It was very soon, in the same town, had crowds, and a booth is rented. By midday Sunday, they had sold out and shut down. Calls are made to China for more product, and a booth was rented in the Sarasota boat show which was just a few weeks later. I'm there milling around looking for something interesting when I stumble upon a booth that was noisy, and jammed with people. This was my introduction to Bass Egg, and it's very kinetic staff. 

Bass Egg is a complete miniature stereo, and speaker system, but with no cone. The magnets, and voice coil transfer the sound vibrations to the small pad on the bottom of the unit. Sit it on something like a table top or a fiberglass boat console and that then becomes the speaker cone. Pick it up, no music, sit it back down, you have music again.

Bass Egg's currently come in two power configurations. The shorter units are for personal use and have a 5 watt output, and the taller units are 26 watts for larger areas. The output frequency range is 80Hz to 18kHz.

All have internal rechargeable lithium cell batteries, micro SD card slots, 1/8" mini jack inputs, remote control, connection cables, FM receiver, 4 setting equalizer, and a suction cup attachment. The taller King Kong unit below also has a USB memory stick jack, and LED lit touch pad. The smaller units weigh .8 of a pound, and the larger units are 2.3 pounds. Having some tangible heft eliminates the need for some sticky substance to keep contact with the surface. You can expect about 4 hours play time per charge.

So how does a Bass Egg really sound. The answer is great, but dependent on the surface you put it on, and that is part of the fun. I have put the King Kong unit on easily more than a hundred surfaces. Glass, chalk boards (they sound really good), over twenty boat consoles, galley Corian sink covers, bar tops, sheet rock walls, foam board, and you name it. Extensive testing have done I.

Place it on the top of your barbecue grill, and it will sound metallic, fiberglass consoles sound good, especially if the space below is open. Dock boxes sound great also. The denser, and thicker the surfaces are, the less they will vibrate, and the lower the volume will be. Concrete floors, don't vibrate well at all, I have tried it, and trust me about brick. In general most thinner surfaces work well but some types of surfaces can distort at higher volumes, and you just have to turn it down a bit. Most of this was written while I have been playing a King Kong sitting on my desk, and it sounds great. Kates' Ipod is loaded with good tunes, especially that Gotye, and Kimbra song. Old people can be hip too, well maybe sometimes.

All units come with a sturdy suction cup attachment that will keep the unit it place when your boat, or car is rock and rolling. The use of the vacuum attachment does reduce the output volume a little due to vibration transfer loss. There have been some units that have had the small pad on the bottom removed, and were glued directly to the fiberglass console making the vibration transfer loss nearly non-existent. A more effective system for permanent attachment if desired is in the works.

Will this replace your $1000 dollar marine grade Fusion stereo, with the 10" speakers and sub-woofer on your boat? No, and to be honest at 26 watts you won't be able hear it in a 40 knot wind with the twin engines howling at 6000 rpm's either. But it works well about everywhere else. On your tender, the center console while beached on the island, or on a picnic table or cooler at the beach. These are pocket sized, with good sound, very clever implementation, and connectivity to almost all mobile music devices, and smart phones. They are also inexpensive starting around $50 for the five watt units up to a maximum of $120 for the King Kong.

I suspect that boaters in the long run are not going to be Bass Egg's primary market, although there is certainly a place for them on many boats. The Palm Beach boat show was a fortuitous act of geography, and the timing worked out well for them. Bass Egg also has some new things coming including Bluetooth interfaces, and some other very cool, and unique products I can't talk about yet in the works. You can visit Bass Egg's booth at most of the upcoming Suncoast boat shows such as Ft Lauderdale, and St Pete, along with Summer Fest in Milwaukee this July. I have to send back my King Kong demo unit now, and I will miss it, but not for long, I bought one online, gotta have high tech toys.

Here is about a minute of video I shot at the Sarasota boat show of Bass Egg doing demos to give you a feel for the their stereo system. I know these kids will do well.

Bass Egg's website