peaking of drums...

F

Foo-bu

New member
the other day i was trying to get some demo stuff done using a shitty MXL Fox supercardiod dynamic mic. i noticed that whenever i used it to mic the bass or toms i was getting a lot of static.

for the floor tom i had the mic about 6 inches from the drum and had the mic aimed at the hoop of the drum. with the bass i tried moving the mic from inside the drum to outside of the drum about 8 inches. i aimed the mic directly at the sound hole on the drum skin and still got this sound

i recently picked up a shure sm 57. i know its probably not the best mic for micing these drums but its all i can really afford. could it be the mic i was using before or is there a certain technique i need to mic with?

i noticed when i used the Fox as a overhead it worked perfect which makes me wonder if it might have been a technique problem
 
F00-bu
you may want to check the gain settings on your mixer or preamp. I have never used the mxl mic but I don't see why it shouldn't be able to handle micing a floor tom or kick. It sounds like a gain problem to me because you said there was no static when you used it as an overheard. Which is sort of like taking away some of the gain (moving it further from the source or to a less loud source).
The shure sm-57's work great on drums, i have heard plenty of great recordings where the entire kit was recorded using 57's (aside from overheads).
 
yeah i tried adjusting the levels on the mic but for some reason i still was getting the static so i dont know what it could be
 
i also forgot to mention that i was running the mic through a PA preamp. im assuming this is the problem
 
You got it. PAs don't usually come with high quality pres. Anything past 12 oclock will probably result in noticable fuzz.
 
yeah i ended up just renting an apex 125 kick mic and wired it directly to my mixer. the reason i needed the pa before was cuz the mic cable was too short and if i connected it to the pa it would reach my mixer.
 
Well you could of just lonked two cords together although i heard that you dont want your cords to be to long
 
i was budget recording so we didnt wanna have to buy a new cable. i know it sounds cheap but we wanted to use whatever resorces we could get. it was actually cheaper to rent the bass drum mic and a longer cable
 
If/when you're in the market for another mic, if you buy it from 8thstreet.com you can then pick up Shure mic cables for $5 a pop. :)

Worst case, get some Radio Shack or other cheapo cables to reach your mixer with. Using a fuzzy PA preamp as a cable will (as you discovered) only trash your sounds. (Or sound cool, depending on one's point of view.... ;) )
 
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