Mic'ing a bass drum with a guitar cabinet

C

Chibi Nappa

New member
Just did some drum tracks this weekend and tried this for the first time. I thought I'd pass along a fun/odd little tip:

You can add some really cool low frequencies with a room-ish sound to your bass drum if you record using a guitar cabinet as a microphone.

First mic the kit as you usually would. If you have a spare track and channel, set up a guitar cabinet facing the bass drum about 3-4 feet out in front. Make sure it is a cabinet only and not a cabinet/amp combo. Treat the input to the speaker cabinet as a microphone output. Run a 1/4 inch cable from the speaker cab to a microphone pre-amp and just hit record. It won't pick up any high freqencies at all, but it adds one heck of an interesting color to your bass drum sound.

This is ment to be used in addition to a regular bass drum mic, not nessisarily as a replacement. As always, move it around until any phasing issues with the regular bass drum mic are worked out.

Give it a shot and have some fun. I'll try and post come clips later today.
 
Here's the audio clips:

http://www.nowhereradio.com/artists/album.php?aid=2823&alid=-1

The example that says "with cabinet" has it in the mix. The "without" example doesn't have it in the mix, and the "cabinet only" example has the cabinet track soloed.

This is only a rough mix of the final drum take with the scratch guitar. The song called for a "trashy" drum sound. The effect of the cabinet is subtle (I mixed it in kinda' low), but it definatly unfocuses the bass drum a little bit and colors it. Makes it sound a little less "studio" or "sterile", so it was perfect for this drum sound.

As a fun bit of trivia, we also filled the snare drum with about $8.00 worth of assorted coins for this take. :) Oh the fun to be had....
 
that definatly adds some nice colour and presence... tried any different speakers? what type were those used?
 
I only had one day of recording, and it was a long-distance remote thing.....so we could only fit one cab into the car along with all the other crap. So no, that was the only cab we tried. It was a Marshall 4 speaker guitar cab. The model number/name escapes me but I'll check.
 
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