Ot -- hi-fi and tubes

What held up my answer is that I wanted to make a complete reply to the questions of motor stiction and fidelity of the contrabass. Ya know, something both elegant and informative. The short answer is that yes the brush motor does need some minimum signal to get it moving, and as a result distortion at very low levels is worse than a typical voicecoil driver. Some controller designs actively kickstart motor, most though just ignore it since low level bass is fairly inaudible anyway. Once the level gets more interesting the universal opinion is that the bass of the Contrabass is as good as it gets and pretty much better than anything else (Sorry John, even those McCauly woofers). The secret is the genius of Tom Danley, who invented the contrabass and patented the design, the guy just really understands bass and sound reproduction.