Drum recording issues...Someone please help!

[ranjam]

This isn't a gimme, but a simple (or complex, depending on how you look at it) idea to try. If you can swing it, borrow or rent some extra gear. How many tracks are you dedicating to drums? Maybe, just maybe, you can use the mics you have into a little submixer. If the submixer has inserts, try some extra EQ and compression. Especially compress the kick, and probably the snare. Now run stereo out to two tracks on the Fostex.
The Rode is a vocal mic to most people, so leave it our for now. The Beta 52 (if that's what you have) is your kick mic, the Audix(?) can be a snare mic, and the AKG LDC can be an overhead, or put out in front maybe 6' and say about 6' high for an overall drum mic. Don't EQ or compress it.
You know, with just those three mics, maybe you don't need an extra submixer. It's more noise added, so maybe this isn't such a great idea. But it won't hurt to try. You can only record four tracks at once, so you may have to go mono, and have the other three tracks for the rest of the band. So maybe a submix into one track of the Fostex is the answer, making the submix very important.
Recording drums is difficult work, with a lot of preplanning. You may have to tune them differently, and muffle the kick. I always think there is a way to tune and play for 'live' and a way to tune and play for 'recording'.
Don't worry about recording 16-bit and 44.1KHz. The lo-fi sound, if you are careful, can be very retro cool.