micing toms

F

fuquam

New member
Any recommendations for a good tom mic are greatly appreciated. I just added to my preamps so I have more tracks I can record at once. Traditionally I mic'ed drums snare, bass, 2 overheads but I wanted to split a mic for the toms. I tried using an AT 3030 condenser right between the two but it sounded harsh even with a pad and also thin at times. Plus it picked up too much ride and snare. I only tried it because I had it sitting around. So any ideas?
 
I've had good results with 57's and D409's. I like the sound of the 57 as much as the d409's and the 57 is half the money. I don't know how well the 57 will do if you are trying to use one on two drums. You'll likely have a pretty good ring out of them.


F.S.
 
In my experience, micing 'in-between' the toms should only be done if you really really have no other choice...and a condensor I def' wouldn't use!!
SM57's are just fine, but one per tom!
 
i've outfitted my toms with AKG D22's. They're about $70 each. they don't pick up much outside of what they're aimed at and they sound a LOT better than the sm57's (545's) i was previously using.


cheers,
wade
 
D22 you say?? Good price! Is the housing on those metal or pastic?
Are they focused enough that it makes a big difference when you point to the center or the rim? I only ask because it does not look like you could get it very far over the drum if you wanted. When I say very far I mean 1 & 1/2 inches max.

Thanks

F.S.
 
yeah, $70's not bad. i got a handful of em used for about $40 each a while back and supplemented them with a couple new ones.

they're about the same size as the sennheiser 604s and the housings are metal. they're made in china, so who knows what they "really" are. but they're all consistent with each other in terms of sound, so i don't really care. ;)

they come with rim-mounting clips that are absolutely worthless--you're right, they don't get very far over the rim AND they're almost right on top of the head. i threw em in the junk bin. maybe they'll be better suited for clipping to a trumpet or something, b/c they suck on my drums.

i just put em on stands. i don't like rim mounts for studio use anyway (live it's passable).

and yeah, they're VERY focused--a movement of an inch can mean the difference between a deep "BOOM" and a ringy "BOING".

in fact, i use one on snare too--i've gotten a better snare sound out of one of these than i have out of a sennheiser 835, shure 57/545, sennheiser 609 and mxl 603. excellent crack and very little hat wash.

here's a link: http://www.musiciansfriend.com/product/AKG-D-22-Dynamic-Microphone-for-Instruments?sku=275670


cheers,
wade
 
For those of you who mic their toms....Just curious.

When you pan them, do you put them across the stereo field as you hear fit, or do you listen to the overheads first and then try to match where the toms fall in the overheads with the close mics???
 
i build my drum sound out of my overhead(s), room mics, kick and snare mic. the tom mics are there for depth and impact.

on the tom tracks, i clean them up considerably and edit out all information that's not a tom hit and i pan them across the field. usually i employ a mono overhead (usually panned center) so the toms provide some stereo spread (in conjunction with the room mics).

when i use stereo overheads, the toms also get panned across the field, but inside of the L/R overheads.

how far around the stereo field depends on how many drums in the kit. if it's a 4 piece with a rack and floor, the rack is usually just left of center and the floor is a bit right of center. having the toms in a 4-piece kit hard-panned L/R just doesn't sound right. :p

but on my 7 piece kit, they go from about 8:00 to 4:00 on the pan knobs across....... :D

i like hearing the drummer go around the kit when listening on headphones, and i pan from the drummer's perspective b/c as a drummer, it sounds backwards otherwise. but i try to make it sound somewhat "realistic"......to answer your question...."a little of both." :D


cheers,
wade
 
mrface2112 said:
i build my drum sound out of my overhead(s), room mics, kick and snare mic. the tom mics are there for depth and impact.

on the tom tracks, i clean them up considerably and edit out all information that's not a tom hit and i pan them across the field. usually i employ a mono overhead (usually panned center) so the toms provide some stereo spread (in conjunction with the room mics).

when i use stereo overheads, the toms also get panned across the field, but inside of the L/R overheads.

how far around the stereo field depends on how many drums in the kit. if it's a 4 piece with a rack and floor, the rack is usually just left of center and the floor is a bit right of center. having the toms in a 4-piece kit hard-panned L/R just doesn't sound right. :p

but on my 7 piece kit, they go from about 8:00 to 4:00 on the pan knobs across....... :D

i like hearing the drummer go around the kit when listening on headphones, and i pan from the drummer's perspective b/c as a drummer, it sounds backwards otherwise. but i try to make it sound somewhat "realistic"......to answer your question...."a little of both." :D


cheers,
wade
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Cool. thanx.

So you don't neccessarilly put the headphones on, listen to where the toms fall in the stereo field in just the overheads, and then match the panning of your individual mics to that, then? Obviously you can't do that with a mono overhead, but I was just curious if that's how people pan their drums when close micing.
 
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RAMI said:
For those of you who mic their toms....Just curious.

When you pan them, do you put them across the stereo field as you hear fit, or do you listen to the overheads first and then try to match where the toms fall in the overheads with the close mics???
Click to expand...
I don't pan the toms unless there are more than 4 of them. I always pan the floor rom to the center.
 
Simman said:
First choice are the MD421 all around.
Click to expand...

agreed. occasionally i'll use like a D112 on floor tom to get stupid amounts of low end from it. I also end up cutting out a fair amount of the upper mids, something around 300-700hz generally gets cut pretty hard. I also use moon-gel to act as a natural gate.

Don't use tape (or even worse tape some tissues down!) to try and get the sound you want. More often than not, it'll sound a bit shit and actually kill the tone of the drum. If the tom doesn't sound nice with NOTHING on it, then you've got it tuned wrong. Getting the length of the resonance correct in a *close* mic is a question of natural gates (a-la moongel) and noise gates. Also to bare in consideration is whether you want a near-constant pitch, or one that dips a bit etc. This can be achieved by tuning the head and the resonance skin differently..

I don't use noise gates to get the attack right or to get the track clean (i edit everything by hand), i just use them to get the length of the resonance correct.



Most important info ever: if you or the drummer don't know how to tune the toms, they'll sound shit.





(all of the above is IMHO!)
 
Farview said:
I don't pan the toms unless there are more than 4 of them. I always pan the floor rom to the center.
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i'm glad to hear someone else does this, i like my floor in the center.
but i also try to put t1 and t2 kind of l and r respectively.
i've always wondered if this was a no no because it's not the same as the actual set up of the kit, but it's where i want them to be.
 
MessianicDreams said:
agreed. occasionally i'll use like a D112 on floor tom to get stupid amounts of low end from it. I also end up cutting out a fair amount of the upper mids, something around 300-700hz generally gets cut pretty hard. I also use moon-gel to act as a natural gate.

Don't use tape (or even worse tape some tissues down!) to try and get the sound you want. More often than not, it'll sound a bit shit and actually kill the tone of the drum. If the tom doesn't sound nice with NOTHING on it, then you've got it tuned wrong. Getting the length of the resonance correct in a *close* mic is a question of natural gates (a-la moongel) and noise gates. Also to bare in consideration is whether you want a near-constant pitch, or one that dips a bit etc. This can be achieved by tuning the head and the resonance skin differently..

I don't use noise gates to get the attack right or to get the track clean (i edit everything by hand), i just use them to get the length of the resonance correct.



Most important info ever: if you or the drummer don't know how to tune the toms, they'll sound shit.





(all of the above is IMHO!)
Click to expand...

watch the tone rings which tend to kill the attack of the drum a little, and you'll need the attack.

+ 1000 on tuning, nothing will save an un-tuned tom.
 
giraffe said:
watch the tone rings which tend to kill the attack of the drum a little, and you'll need the attack.
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Not quite sure what you mean by "tone rings"? Do you mean the plastic rings that can go on the heads?


Edit: as for panning, mostly rack tom 1 goes left, tom 2 (if there is one) goes just right of center, floor tom goes right. Depending on the song, the panning will be more or less extreme..

Sometimes i put the floor in the center with toms 1 and 2 left and right respectively, other times i'll have the image as if you're looking at the drummer...it varies from song to song and genre to genre..
 
fuquam said:
Any recommendations for a good tom mic are greatly appreciated. I just added to my preamps so I have more tracks I can record at once. Traditionally I mic'ed drums snare, bass, 2 overheads but I wanted to split a mic for the toms. I tried using an AT 3030 condenser right between the two but it sounded harsh even with a pad and also thin at times. Plus it picked up too much ride and snare. I only tried it because I had it sitting around. So any ideas?
Click to expand...

Are you only using a side tom and floor tom or are you wanting to mic your rack toms and not your floor tom?

It seems kind of counter productive to mic just the 2 rack toms and not the floor tom if that's what you're doing. It seems to me like it would make it hard to balance all the toms in the mix. If this is the situation, I would be tempted to just use that extra mic as a room mic or to mic the bottom of the snare instead.

If you're micing just the 2 rack toms though, I would agree with some of the posters here about using a 421. Still seems counter productive though.

I imagine the actual situation is a rack tom and floor tom though.

If you're splitting a mic between the rack tom and floor tom you're going to have a lot of bleed no matter what you use, but it would probably add some punch to the toms that you're not getting with just overheads. In this case, I would be tempted to use some kind of small diaphragm omni condenser between them.

I guess you have issues with bleed and want more seperation though.

The bleed really isn't a problem as long as it sounds good though and no matter how tight a cardioid pattern you use (cardioid or hyper cardioid) you're not going to get much separation from the other parts of the kit.

I also imagine that with a cardioid pattern you're going to have a harder time getting a good balance of the 2 toms also. I can't think of a place where you could put a mic where it wouldn't have a lot of bleed, more proximity effect on one tom than the other, or that it's polar pattern wouldn't favor one over the other without making it essentially a 3rd overhead mic that's closer to the set and still pickup up plenty of the rest of the kit and possibly causing some phaseyness with the overhead mics.

Since you don't have to worry about proximity effect with an omni mic it seems like you would just have to get it equidistant from each tom to balance them decently.

The more I think about it the more I realize that you're going to have to compromise to the point that it's almost not worth doing.
 
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