These custom headphones promise mind-blowing bass, as long as you don’t mind looking like a human dumbbell
Ol' Thumpy will make music sound better, but it does come with a teeny tiny design compromise
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You’ve got to love a set of headphones called Ol' Thumpy. They’re the latest brainchild of Californian drummer, headphone creator, Distrokid founder and writer Philip Kaplan, aka Pud; they look absolutely ridiculous; and they’re really rather clever.
Spotted by our friends over atPC Gamer, if you don’t mind looking like a cartoon character who’s been whacked with a dumbbell, Ol' Thumpy should deliver the most incredible bass you’ve ever experienced.
That’s because those spheres include what’s called a Helmholtz resonator, which you’ll sometimes find in bass reflex speaker cabinets: it vibrates at a specific frequency to produce a specific sound, in this case a 60Hz bass note. It’s based on the same principle that produces a tone when you blow into the neck of a bottle, or that produces the notes when you play an ocarina.
Ol' Thumpy isn’t the only…interestingdesign that Pud has created. If you’ve been looking for headphones shaped like cephalopods or giant devil horns, Kaplan’spud.comis the place for those too.
Nevermind the earbuds: we’ve got ear Puds
Pud’s Small Batch Headphonesis where you’ll find Ol' Thumpy alongside other distinctive models such as the devil-horned Blasphemy, the four-earpad Polycule for listening with friends, and the Pinnus “invisible” headphones (it may not shock you to learn that these are, in fact, somewhat visible).
They’re all real products, and you’ll find Pud announcing them onRedditwhere he discusses the designs with headphone heads, and they’re far from being dumb novelties: for example, he explains how he modelled his Cephalopods on the famous Nautilus speaker from Bowers & Wilkins, and the devil horns are filled with wool to reduce unwanted sound waves.
I’ll be honest: I’d never wear a pair of Pud’s headphones in public, and probably not in private either. The Nautilus-inspired Cephalopods give me the ick. But I absolutely love them all the same: they’re clearly a labor of love, and while they look completely bizarre there’s method in their madness – and that goes double for Ol' Thumpy.
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As the name suggests, Pud’s Small Batch Headphones aren’t mass-produced: Pud makes each of them by hand. You can sign up to be notified when each of his designs becomes available, and to be notified of whatever beautiful/terrifying madness he comes up with next.
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Writer, broadcaster, musician and kitchen gadget obsessive Carrie Marshall has been writing about tech since 1998, contributing sage advice and odd opinions to all kinds of magazines and websites as well as writing more than a dozen books. Her memoir,Carrie Kills A Man, is on sale now and her next book, about pop music, is out in 2025. She is the singer in Glaswegian rock bandUnquiet Mind.
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