Mic For Snare

The 58 is the closest thing you have to an SM57 which is kind of an industry standard for snare. I'd use that. Take the ball off if you don't think the drummer will hit it.

DD
 
Well, the baby bottle might be interesting . . . but I don't think I'd trust it or the drummer that close to his sticks . . . unless he's a jazz drummer or something.

Go with the 58.
 
i'd go with the 58 as well, but the f12 might be cool depeding on the style of the music and how loud the overall kit is.
 
I think it depends largely on the type of sound you are going for. Even though I have used the 57 on snare a lot myself, more recently I've been favoring a SD condenser a bit off to the side pointing at the shell. A close-mic'ed 57 tends to pick up mostly the top head with little body or snare sound. When I'm doing the 57 thing, I generally rely much more heavily on the overheads for the snare sound. But I'm also usually going for a more real/roomy sound, not a tight, dry kind of thing.

Oh, and I haven't used one, but the Beyer M201 is supposed to be a nice snare mic.
 
I think Harvey once said......

...that he would remove the ball end of 58's to make them 57's.

I think the implication is that internally the 57 and 58's are the same but the ball end grill gives the 58 a different response.

I might be wrong.......as this was something I read about quite a while ago.

-mike
 
some of you are brave souls putting a large diaphragm condenser on a snare. Granted some well known people do this, but they can afford to lose a mic! To keep it simple think of the physics this way: say you got a pipe and stretch a peice of plastic wrap across the opening. Now if the pipe's diameter is really small and you bounce something heavy off the plastic how likely is the plastic going to break? Now get a pipe with a very large diameter and bounce the weight off the stretched plastic. Much more likey to break, eh? The plastic is the diaphgragm of your mic. Hence this is one reason why you can get away with using small diaphgragm condensers. Your gamble. If I saw one of my interns set up a large diaphragm condenser on a snare I would immediately send them to do my laundry and get me a carne asada burrito and a strawberry agua fesca to wash it down. Gracias putos.
 
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