Absolute favorite mic for snare drum

  • Thread starter Thread starter PhilGood
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PhilGood

PhilGood

Juice box hero
I have used SM57's and Beta 57's and other mics, but still have not found that perfect sound for me.

So what I want to know...


Please list your personal favorite mic for snare and why. I will be evaluating each post to see the qualities I'm looking for. Be sure to talk about cardioid pattern and off axis rejection as well as tome qualities and ease of placement.

Otherwise I'm buying a behringer B1 and than blaming every one of you for it! :mad:
 
Beyer 201 on top and one of your 57's on the bottom (or a hyper cardioid MK012, gotta watch for kick bleed a little, sometimes ...or not)
 
I've tried several, and the Studio Electronics SE3 does the best job of capturing the whole drum for me. If I shoot it across the head, I get the pop of the head, the sound of the shell, and the ringing snares. I'm not tempted to do more than one mic on it.
 
Besides the occassional 57, I like Md-441's a lot. Besides sounding great, it has a tight pattern and it ignores a nasty hi hat nicely. And as always, I also like a C-1000. I've never had any luck with bottom mics.
 
You can't polish a turd.

A good snare is always the best way to get a decent sound.

I've got great results with my £8 Takstar PCM6100 condenser on a Chad Smith signature snare - but it sounds crap on a crap snare. Likewise the good ol' 57 sounds bad on a substandard drum.

A good condenser usually produces good results - I like the 451. With a knuckle joint it's so easy to place.
 
I also say the Sennheiser 441. hands down the BEST snare mic I ever used.

Has great rejection. Basically gives you THE sound you want w/o having to process it, gate it, compress it and EQ it to death.

At that price, though, it's not the kind of microphone you would want to use on any old drummer. Only pros who would be the least likely to accidentally hit the mic.
http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/icm_eng.nsf/root/00762
 
Never found a snare yet that I couldn't use the 57 on and get good results.
 
another vote for the Beyer 201,

off axis rejection is excellent, 20 dB at 120°
very rugged construction, Frequency response 40 - 18,000 Hz
and Hypercardioid Polar pattern,
put a 57 on the bottom and your set.
 
The close mic never sounds that great by itself. You need a great room and some good overheads. I love my Josephson C42's.
 
craigmorris74 said:
I've tried several, and the Studio Electronics SE3 does the best job of capturing the whole drum for me. If I shoot it across the head, I get the pop of the head, the sound of the shell, and the ringing snares. I'm not tempted to do more than one mic on it.
Click to expand...

I'm trying to do the snare with just one mic. Recently redid my studio beneath the drums to be all hard flooring. That way I get the reflections from beneath the kit to bounce up to the overheads.
 
pezking said:
You can't polish a turd.

A good snare is always the best way to get a decent sound.

I've got great results with my £8 Takstar PCM6100 condenser on a Chad Smith signature snare - but it sounds crap on a crap snare. Likewise the good ol' 57 sounds bad on a substandard drum.

A good condenser usually produces good results - I like the 451. With a knuckle joint it's so easy to place.
Click to expand...


My snare sounds awesome at any tuning. I had the bearing edges cut special and had the snare bed cut a little deeper to get a nice lite tension with very little if any snare rattle. Now I'm futsing with different head combinations.
 
I am an i5 fan myself... however I have had great results using an SM7 too. Audix OM5s are surprisingly good also as with their low proximity effect and tight pattern they can do quite nicely. Maybe I am not picky enough and am lumping Guinness and PBR into the same category, but I find on snare amongst dynamics there isn't a ton of difference (unless it s a REALLY shitty dynamic ala Nady etc) and spending an extra 20 minutes tuning is more where it is at. As for bleed, I picked up a set of those Auralex Aural•Xpanders and believe it or not those little buggers actually work quite nicely. I notice a good 5-7db drop in bleed which is pretty significant IMO and gets me further than mic patterns tend to.
 
I've never been happy with the SM57, it always seemed thin on snare. I have been using an SM7 with good results. I read a few articles in Mix from pros who were using the SM7 on snare. It can work well on high SPL vocals, too, so I bought one and I'm quite happy with it. I recently bought a Sennheiser e-905. For a more traditional rock/pop snare sound, I'll probably be using the sennheiser, it's beefy but still has that high end snap similar to a 57.
 
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