A cool trick for recording a bass drum...
- Thread starter LRosario
- Start date
glimmer_doll
New member
aw...that's an old one...
works better if you use a regular mic in conjunction with the speaker, to get the kick click...
works better if you use a regular mic in conjunction with the speaker, to get the kick click...
lbcstudios
New member
wait, how do u do it? how is a speaker going to pickup a signal? can anyone explain this in a step by step ? sorry for newbie like question. THanks
Simple .... connect a 1/4 jack to the + and - terminals of a 8" to 12" speaker.
+ to tip
- to sleeve
You may need to reverse the phase depending on how it reacts with other mic's signals.
Then run a standard 1/4" instrument cable from it to a preamp.
Place the speaker a few inches away from the resonant head of the kick. Captures great low-end.
You can also make mics from other small speakers like the ones found in headphones, as per instructions of a fellow forum member at AudioMinds.com ... Mac.
Head over to Radio Shack, pick up one of these transformers , cat. 273-1380, a common transistor audio output transformer.
But in this case we shall use it backwards.
Connect the voice coil terminals of the speaker to the two 8 ohm wires on the transformer, which is listed as the secondary only in this case since we are running backwards it now becomes the primary side.
There are three wires, color-coded, for the 1K center-tapped primary which now becomes our secondary. Treat this as a balanced mic line, center is ground, other two are plus audio and minus audio. Hook 'em to an appropriate XLR connector and you've got a pretty sensitive dynamic mic now.
If phase problems rear their ugly head when using with other mics, simply reverse the two speaker voice coil connections to throw the phase 180 degrees around.
Remember what I told ya, if you can find one of those little polypropylene coned miniature speakers, they tend to work a bit better on snare, but don't overlook any of the small speakers, even the ones with paper cones. Try a few different ones and note the sound differences. Wouldn't go much bigger than about 3"d for this purpose if buying from the shack, but I've gotten some pretty good results with up to 5" paper cone speakers salvaged from old radios and TVs, even oval-shaped speakers of small size can turn in impressive performances. Don't let the impedance of the speaker bother you too much here, anything from about 3-4 ohms through 32 ohms is cool, if you find a 16 or 32 ohm speaker be sure to try it straight in as unbalanced like you did with the big kick drum speaker also.
And don't overlook any cheap headphone elements you may have lying around. I once hot-glued one into the end of a piece of PVC conduit, transformer mounted inside with no more than a bit of foam sponge to hold it in place and put an XLR on the other end. Worked out so well I made a 'matched pair' using the other headphone element. Still have 'em, it's a dynamite little omni-directional dynamic pair.
Compliments of Mac, in the n-Track Forum.
So which goes where when you have to marry an XLR and a TRS? If you look at the end of an XLR you'll notice the numbers 1, 2 and 3 near the pins. The legend for XLR is:
Pin 1 ground
Pin 2 hot
Pin 3 cold
For TRS the legend is:
Tip is hot
Ring is cold
Sleeve is ground
So, the wire from pin 2 goes to the tip, the wire from pin 3 goes to the ring and the wire from pin 1 goes to the sleeve.
How about if you're connecting a balanced to an unbalanced line? That's very simply done. An unbalanced connector has only a hot and a ground. I'll use an XLR to a regular guitar plug as an example but any combination, balanced to unbalanced, will work the same.
Pin 2 goes to tip, and pins 1 and 3 are tied together and go to the ground. This will make any unbalanced connection compatible with a balanced connection.
Experimentation is key ..... try as many different speakers as you can get your hands on.
+ to tip
- to sleeve
You may need to reverse the phase depending on how it reacts with other mic's signals.
Then run a standard 1/4" instrument cable from it to a preamp.
Place the speaker a few inches away from the resonant head of the kick. Captures great low-end.
You can also make mics from other small speakers like the ones found in headphones, as per instructions of a fellow forum member at AudioMinds.com ... Mac.
Head over to Radio Shack, pick up one of these transformers , cat. 273-1380, a common transistor audio output transformer.
But in this case we shall use it backwards.
Connect the voice coil terminals of the speaker to the two 8 ohm wires on the transformer, which is listed as the secondary only in this case since we are running backwards it now becomes the primary side.
There are three wires, color-coded, for the 1K center-tapped primary which now becomes our secondary. Treat this as a balanced mic line, center is ground, other two are plus audio and minus audio. Hook 'em to an appropriate XLR connector and you've got a pretty sensitive dynamic mic now.
If phase problems rear their ugly head when using with other mics, simply reverse the two speaker voice coil connections to throw the phase 180 degrees around.
Remember what I told ya, if you can find one of those little polypropylene coned miniature speakers, they tend to work a bit better on snare, but don't overlook any of the small speakers, even the ones with paper cones. Try a few different ones and note the sound differences. Wouldn't go much bigger than about 3"d for this purpose if buying from the shack, but I've gotten some pretty good results with up to 5" paper cone speakers salvaged from old radios and TVs, even oval-shaped speakers of small size can turn in impressive performances. Don't let the impedance of the speaker bother you too much here, anything from about 3-4 ohms through 32 ohms is cool, if you find a 16 or 32 ohm speaker be sure to try it straight in as unbalanced like you did with the big kick drum speaker also.
And don't overlook any cheap headphone elements you may have lying around. I once hot-glued one into the end of a piece of PVC conduit, transformer mounted inside with no more than a bit of foam sponge to hold it in place and put an XLR on the other end. Worked out so well I made a 'matched pair' using the other headphone element. Still have 'em, it's a dynamite little omni-directional dynamic pair.
Compliments of Mac, in the n-Track Forum.
So which goes where when you have to marry an XLR and a TRS? If you look at the end of an XLR you'll notice the numbers 1, 2 and 3 near the pins. The legend for XLR is:
Pin 1 ground
Pin 2 hot
Pin 3 cold
For TRS the legend is:
Tip is hot
Ring is cold
Sleeve is ground
So, the wire from pin 2 goes to the tip, the wire from pin 3 goes to the ring and the wire from pin 1 goes to the sleeve.
How about if you're connecting a balanced to an unbalanced line? That's very simply done. An unbalanced connector has only a hot and a ground. I'll use an XLR to a regular guitar plug as an example but any combination, balanced to unbalanced, will work the same.
Pin 2 goes to tip, and pins 1 and 3 are tied together and go to the ground. This will make any unbalanced connection compatible with a balanced connection.
Experimentation is key ..... try as many different speakers as you can get your hands on.
volltreffer
Imply depressed
The trick also works quite nice for strange vocals. Running it through a Marshall is quite overused. You may as well try to record with a headphone, that you rotate 90° around your neck so that one side lies in front of your mouth and the other side on the back of your head. Not exactly the look you'd like to have in your video, but gives some nasty kind of distortion...
aXel
aXel
crankz1 said:Back to the subject of the kick speaker mic ..... If you got $300 to blow, you could just buy one of these .... I'd rather build my own for $25 to $50.
Mind you ... these are really only effective at capturing the low-end .... you would still want a convectional mic for the higher frequencies.
Just had to jump in- thanks, crank, I went to see Lyle Lovett about a month ago, there was one of those on the front of the kick drum. Until now I had no idea what it was.
volltreffer
Imply depressed
The trick also works quite nice for strange vocals. Running it through a Marshall is quite overused. You may as well try to record with a headphone, that you rotate 90° around your neck so that one side lies in front of your mouth and the other side on the back of your head. Not exactly the look you'd like to have in your video, but gives some nasty kind of distortion...
aXel
aXel
When my band recorded with a producer out of Chicago, he used a speaker in from of the bass drum. It was the first time i'd seen anything like that and i was a bit startled, but I think i was even more startled by the sound that it recorded. It's a good thing to keep in mind, and I've definitely done it on a few projects.
notbradsohner
Compression Addict
ive got a PA peaker with 1/4 inch ins and outs. So would I use the outs, ins, or do I have to scrap the thing and rewire it?