Thanks for your posts, guys. I've kind of become attached to the mic (it sounds better than my 58 on everything I've tried, though it might not be the *best* vocal or acoustic gtr mic for me, though very smooth and clear - a little bit much on the highs for my already high girl voice - but my classical gtr sounds great).
Now I have a more specific question... below are four possible scenarios for my drum recordings. Just to give some context, I'm recording an album in my bedroom (performing and recording all the instruments by myself). My money is limited (I'm a teenager) and I always need to buy other kinds of stuff (eventually a new guitar fx box, amp, etc) so while I have a few hundred, I'd like to spend as little as possible to get a drum sound that's satisfactory.
A) After much experimentation, I put my AT3035 on overhead on the snare side and I tried sticking my SM58 inbetween the bottom of the snare and the beater side of the kick. While the 58 track sounds just awful when isolated, it added some punchy kick and buzzy snare decay, which I love, to the mix. (Aside: the snare buzzes audibly on every tom hit - any ideas on fixing that problem?) Then I duplicated the OH track, panned the tracks to the side and put on a few ms of delay to create some stereo. This set-up sounded decent, surprisingly. Here's a sample (in wav - it's quite short):
Nell's Drum Sample
B) I could buy a second AT3035 (hopefully cheap or used) and do stereo OH micing with them and keep the Shure where it is.
C) I could buy the Studio Projects C4 pair (after research, these sound the best of their kind...?) and use them for overhead and play around with the AT and the Shure (I'd probably end up putting the AT on the hi-hat - I like a close hi-hat sound). This is the most expensive scenario but I could afford to do this as it would probably put the quality of my recording up several notches.
D) I could buy a Studio Projects B1 and compare it to the AT and really decide which I like better, get rid of the other, then buy a second of my favorite.
So, what would you do? The way I see it, stereo mic'ing would really open up the sound and make the recordings altogether lusher (it seems that if one element of the mix, especially the drums, sounds "closed in" it will hold back the rest). I'm leaning towards scenario C, followed by B. If I did C the AT3035 would become not 100% necessary, which on my budget seems stupid, but the idea of having "enough and then some" is kind of thrilling, really. B would be okay, but I feel a little bit silly buying another AT when I've never used any other LDC or any SDC condenser at all, which justifies D. But D would be a pain in the ass, because if I decide against the AT, I have to go through the trouble of selling it, and alternatively I'd have to bothering with returning the B1.
An altogether other direction would be using a different single LDC or SDC, such as a SPB1, for the second overhead. Does it really sound all that bad to have different kinds of mics on OH? Does it get patched up and mismatched sounding? Because it wouldn't hurt to have different kind of mics to choose from for vox, gtr, etc.
... When I use the AT on acoustic, it picks up alot of finger-string squeak, - probably my playing style. The mic sounds bright, - some call it 'hyped'. I use it with the SM57 on my guitar cabs, - here's a link to a quick one-minute recording of both mics mixed...
