NWB - Community Blog

give Mark knight a shout from Vankwish.
he has this flat bass drum mic, and puts it in the drum.
he seems to rate it, i dont know what its called, he may advise
when he sees this blog,
i would also say that a good mic would be useless going out to
incorect equipment and speakers in the pa, its all got to be right
from the drum to the air. with the right tweeking of the mixing
and EQ aswell.

pete.

I use Shure SM57's and 58's on my dads kit along with an AKG drum mic, the model I cannot remember at this time. Cost in excess of £200.00 so wasn't a cheap & chearful mic.

Lee :)

PG52 (stand mounted) on bass drum and one SM58 (or similar) mounted on a K&M mic clip attached to bass drum hoop - picks up all the toms and snare and the mix is fed through the PA to the sub and tops via a crossover.

The cymbals take care of themselves.

Minimum fuss, very effective results. The set up was stolen entirely from an ex pro who long since stopped mic'ing his drums individually as to his mind, for your average pub gig, the difference in quality between the 2 set ups didn't warrant the extra expense and set up time. I don't have the luxury of any other option as I don't own a full set of mics but am happy with the sound this set up gives me. We did dabble with an overhead between the 2 rack toms but the sound wasn't as good as having the mic on the drum hoop where it picks up more of the resonance of the rack toms, a good chunk of the snare, and the floor tom batter head.

You give the cowbell to Heidi, right before she sets off up the mountain to spread her legs for Peter.

Just bought a full set of mics from RED5 Audio mate, they have got excellent reviews and you buy direct so the prices are excellent. Have gigged them a few times and they are a very solid mic and as far as I am aware producing a very good sound. Have a word with The Twiddler (our sound engineer) to see how he rates them but we never have any problems with feedback and soundcheck is over in seconds.
Check 'em out here, http://www.red5audio.com/acatalog/Drum_Kit_Mics.html
I can personally recommend them for service as my first case came with a minor dent on it and they sent me another with no quibbles so I use the spare for all the XLR's!

It is also worth noting the rig is a mjor factor on the sound.

I have used superlux and very effective results on an HK (?) system. Also how it is used and manned.
Also consider do you want an exspensive mic on a tom that will make very little difference to the sound.
Not very helpful but food for thought I spose..

You would struggle to go wrong with an sm57 on the snare and AKG d112.

Heard lots of positive reviews on the Shure PG too.

CANNOT go wrong with an AKG D112 for the bass drum! Studio standard for years. I also use an SM57 for the snare, overheads I would go for a set of AKG's (you can get decent AKG mics for as little as £100) and tom mics, I seem to find are pretty standard across the board but would stick with maybe Shure as a make!

Good Luck!
:)

@ tubthumper

Interesting location for a mic!
Presume only any good with mic type that picks up at 360 degree field (omnicardioid?).

I think if I did a rock gig with that there though that it would collect a fair bit of the low freq from cabs that I generally battle with :)

Can't beat PG56 set with PG52 bass drum mic, cracking as overheads also and on guitar cabs. N

As Marauder say the mics from RED5 work great i have n problem getting a great sound out of the kit.
( the Twiddler)

After never being happy with the bass drum feel, I had changed kits/skins you name it we did a gig where it was outdoor, large area, large PA, the sound engineers was happy to use my D606 topm mics on the toms, but not my PG52 on the bass drum, instead he used his own shure Beta 91, a new thing to me, but from changing from mine to his all I could say was wow - im buying one
incedentaly we usd what was my bass drum mic onto my floor tom, and agin - what a differance.

After a bit(lot) of research I came across problems with the Beta 91, it has a small xlr socket and an adapter wire with a preamp - these give regular greif apparently, but there was a new kid in town enter the Sennheiser e901
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std xlr input, no preamp boundry mic, this daddy takes mega sound pressure levels and delivers a bass drum sound (pa dependant of course) that ive yet to hear any better in any pub ive been in.

needless to say, my old bass mic is now my floor tom mic !

Technology does move on guys - the old AKG was good and still is, but it can be bettered now!

@ Drum Bloke - I admit it is odd, but as I confessed, I robbed the idea off an old pro. He says that "back in the day" drummers used to gaffa tape an sm58 (or similar) to the top of their bass drum (in addition to mic'ing the bass drum) as it was the single best place to catch a good spread of sound if you were limited to one "overhead". The K & M clip just facilitates the idea a bit better.

I've never had a bit of trouble with it picking up anything I didn't want it to. In fact if you don't angle it slightly towards your snare it picks next to bugger all of it up so I doubt that ambient frequencies would trouble it.

I don't doubt it's no substitute for mic'ing drums individually but I do question that mic'ing kits to that extent in your average small/medium venue is appropriate. After all, the electric guitar was invented so it could be heard over the level of the drum kit. The drum kit should be the loudest "voice" in the band, without resorting to amplification. We talk a lot about eq pillows etc for bass drums (and no sarcasm/digs intended) it seems to be a real paradox to me to care so much about those kinds of things and then effectively kill or inhibit the "true" acoustic sound of the kit by mic'ing it all up.

I object to having to mic my kit at all. It's a good (but not OTT) kit, I put very good quality heads on it, tune it properly and maintain it thoroughly - I don't want to have to bash it senseless to be heard, nor do i want it's sound to be made artificial (to whatever degree) by putting it through a PA. I shouldn't have to - not in a pub. However, I'm fighting a losing battle and to avoid the need to thrash the crap out of it so my concession is that the bass drum be mic'ed and I use the one overhead as pictured. I happen to think it still affords me a decent "natural" acoustic sound. You can judge for yourself in this video - as it used to be your kit you'll have a better idea than anyone about it's sound (I bloody love it by the way!)

&feature=related

Anyhow, reading that back it comes over all ranty and its not intended that way (though if my bandmates are reading then yes it is and you should all turn down a bit!).

So in closing, I don't like mic'ed drums - unless you're playing some kind of arena or unusual/large venue I really don't see it being justified as in my view the band must be too loud.

But if you're going to buy a mic set the Red5 would be my choice (unless money was no option) - they've had absolutely phenominal reviews in both rhythm and drummer magazines.

is that a straight to video video?? i mean is the sound as recorded through the video mic???

if so a great drum sound ... in fact a great band sound

Agree totally about the "electric" instruments being designed to play above the drums, but that's all fucked up now with the mega guitar rigs that these guys use these days ......... who needs a full stack in a pub for fuck's sake ........ I've seen guys who can't reach their amp it's physically that high ffs!!!!

Yep. It's my trusty old panasonic mini DV camcorder. It must be 10 years old now but it records sound like no modern day camcorder I've come across (and I own a few more "modern" gadgets).

I've ditched my much more costly HD gear and gone back to the old camera - it was tripod mounted about 15 feet away from the band and fairly (but by no means equidistant) to the PA speakers and theres been absolutely no sound or video editing done before uploading to youtube. I've used the same camera for all my band recordings (it has a zoom mic too which is well handy if you want to cut out ambient noise around the camera itself though I kind of like some "atmosphere" noise.

As for the monster stacks and mic'ing - I agree they all have their place - I just don't think that place is down your local in the corner of the snug!

I saw a photo in a guitar mag of some famous guitarist in front of a massive marshall stack - only the photo was taken side on and the "stack" was a facade and behind it was a tiddly little set up. It amused me greatly!

Edited to add:-

PS Thanks for the kind comments

excellent all around ............ i was made up to acquire a HD something gigawatt hard drive video recorder recently and ................. it does a picture like no other ..... but ... like every camcorder i've ever owned, doesn't "do" sound .... even with separate add on mics .........

as far as guitarists go .... use your amp for stage monitoring and di into pa (not mic ... DI . cos then you can up the volume on stage without affecting the PA sound)......... voila .... sorted!! Not rocket science is it???

as long as you have a master volume amp .... come on you do don't you?? of course you do ...... really?? No???

Oh!!

I can see your lips moving (all right OK, I mean I can see type appearing) but when you talk all electrickery things my eyes just roll to the back of my head and I slip into a catatonic state.

Isn't a DI a detective inspector?

@Willow,

DI'ing your amp is ok if the amp in question has a dedicated DI out socket or like most old Peaveys, power amp out jack, otherwise by DI'ing you will just be getting you guitar or straight from your boards sound and not the amp's speaker.

Depending on what style of music you're playing I suppose that doesn't really matter, if I was playing lead on the type of stuff I would normally do, well a mic in front of the amp is the only way to go.

When I do FOH for my fathers band the only instrument i DI is the bass, rhythm & lead have mic's in front of the amp, but to be fair, as you rightly pointed out, the amps on-stage should be for monitoring purposes only whilst the PA does all the hard work.

Never understand why bands turn up at pubs with a PA that would give Status Quo a run for their money, pointless, time consuming and nothing gained at the end of it apart from deafness, a bad back and an inflated ego!!!

Lee :)