Wow, I became unpopular awful fast.
Please allow me to better articulate my view.
The old drum sounds that most people love are based on tighter tunings and room recordings (in a broad sense). A drums true sound has to develop, it doesn't happen right by the head. Bonhams' (and a lot of others, for that matter) drums were tuned tighter than most people realize. The depth of the drums' sound is projected, not at the point of impact. Folks try close-micing drums with flappy heads and can't figure out why they sound like cardboard boxes.
Obviously, what sounds good or bad is highly relative and subjective. A musician who is adamant about maintaining their sound is no more egocentric than an engineer who says "your instrument sounds like crap, here play a real instrument." Not to mention that kind of thing can put a real damper on the creative process. Maybe it does sound like total crap, record it the way it is. The other side is that a lot of drummers in particular don't really know how their drums nor their playing sound until they hear it recorded. So someone that doesn't have much recording experience may require a little more trial and error to come to terms with these things.
There's a big difference between suggesting/trying treatments, etc to enhance a sound (like setting a tamboring on a hi-hat or playing by an indoor pool and recording the reflected sounds) and simply telling someone their instrument is shitty, it sounds shitty and that they need to play something else.
You think any engineer ever said, "Excuse me, Mr. Collins, can you just play some double-headed drums, please? Those "concert toms" sound terrible. "
Now, back to the original topic. A lot of drummers (that havn't recorded much, anyway) don't play with a "natural kit dynamic" because they only ever hear their playing from behind the kit. So one option is to simply close-mic everything and try to get a more natural kit dynamic at the board. (Bleh!) One big obstacle with this method is isolation between drums/mics, and some people get all anal about sympathetic vibrations, bleeding and whatnot and start throwing on gates and crap. This is the point at which I say, just use synth drums and save everyone a lot of time and headache.
With room-micing, if the drummer has a heavy lead hand, the hats and ride and whatnot are going to come through more. One consideration here is obviously mic placement. The other is that the drummer can now actually hear what his playing sounds like to the rest of the world and make adjustments accordingly, i.e., lightening up on the hats or putting a little more into the kick, etc. Even experienced drummers will need a little time to "learn the room". Yes, it can be time-consuming, but no more than the tedium of close-micing everything, plus there's more artistic involvement than just "gate this", "compress that" etc.
Both methods are often used together, however it seems that most often than not, the emphasis and time is all spent on close mics while a room mic or two is usually injudiciously thrown up mixed in just enough to add a little "room sound".
Defensive bunch here.