Kick drum mic

 

If you have a good kit you should be able to get a good sound with minimal dampening, but if its anything less than about £1600 you really need to think about getting rid of those dodgy resonances with O rings, Moongel or in the case of a bass drum (a pillow placed with 20 % against the batter head)

 

In this case a D112 is the best option as it can make a bad drumkit sound good

 

But there are some mics including the D6 and EV RE20, and sometimes the Audio Technica with double elements (although I dont personally like this) that can really make a good drumkit sound fantastic.

 

Stu

 

 

The first method gives a lot of sustain to the drum, which no matter how you tune, cant be stopped without dampening, either through using a coated or oil filled head, or with O-rings, moongel or gaffa. I like the pure tone but with a relatively short sustain so as to minimise sympathetic resonances and to prevent requiring gating everything, so I tune this way and dampen with either moongel, externally mounted dampeners or gaffa depending on the drum.

 

The size of the shell also makes a difference as larger diameter heads tuned relatively slack just give more of a thud rather than a pitch (take the Bonham 26"x14" kickdrum and why the size of the drum just automatically makes a good sound), and usually requires less dampening (the downside being they have a tendancy to resonate in sympathy with other drums more easily, necessitating the use of gates which I think sound really terrible when set up incorrectly, which is 90% of the time)

 

With oil filled or coated heads all these serve to do is dampen different frequencies out of the drum - coated and black dotted heads on a snare help to dampen out unwanted resonance caused by a cheap shell, badly cut bearing edges or poor tuning, and pinstripes or other oil filled heads often end up emparting too much of the sound of the drumhead into the kit, rather than letting the shells sing which is most beneficial if you have a bad kit but want to make it sound better, but you dont see too many pros with good quality maple or birch kits using these heads because they have a kind of aggressive characteristic.

 

@Boab - the reason those earthworks mics work so well is the very small diaphragm and therefore fast settling time, to get a similar result you dont need anything more than a standard measurement mic, the Behringer ECM8000 does a sterling job on OH for the price, and there are similar priced offerings from the likes of Peavey. Granted the Earthworks have lower noise figures but are in the region of I think £2k more expensive and for a drumkit you need very little gain anyway so its questionable in all but the more expensive studios.

 

I have the earthworks CD which gives examples of a kit done with just the earthworks mics, and also in conjunction with close mics on toms and snare, there was no comparison, while the earthworks mics sounded great on their own, as soon as you get into the fray with other instruments and severe amounts of compression and/or distortion that are used these days, you wont have a hope in hell of getting enough punch to sit well in a studio mix - and I wouldnt want to take such a good set of quality microphones out on the road, especially since they are Omnis (they make cardioids as well but IMO they didnt sound half as good)

 

Stu

 

Stu