Bass drum Maxing...

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emergencyexit

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Me and my band owns a small basement studio, and we have just recently started on a new album. For our drum mics we have a 4 peice shure mic package with 3 sm-57s and a beta 52 kick mic, two condensers (don't remember what they are), and two more sm-57s for snare and other stuff. All of these sound great except for the beta 52. We want a punchy sound kinda like the kick on Lamb of God's "Ashes Of The Wake" so I put it about 4 inches from the beater on the inside. Turning the gain down it shows that the level isn't maxing, but it sounds like it is, and no matter how much I turn down the gain it always sounds like this. Please help me on this!!! everything else sounds great just this small problem.

HELP!

-Ben
 
mic may be clipping, but I doubt it... more likely, you've got your gain staging all f'ed up. check that at no point in your chain are you pushing the system. start with your preamp, then work through the chain. you just said 'turning the gain down' which could mean in a LOT of places, all the way to whatever you're recording onto. tell us that, too.
 
what pre are you using?

I would try speaking into the mic, and see if there is anything that sounds obviously wrong.

could something be resonating inside the drum? perhaps it's not normally audible, but it's being picked up by the mic.

check all screws, nuts and bolts (including on the mic stand), and anything else for buzzes.
 
The meter on the mic preamp won't be fast enough to show you the real peak level of a hit. With drums, you need to set your levels very conservativly. Also, if you have no dampening (blankets, pillows, etc...) do not put the mic in the center of the drum, you will get phase cancellation from the sound bouncing off the shell. You are best off putting the mic half way between the beater and the shell. If you don't get enough click, slack the head out or get a Danmar pad. The lamb of god stuff that I heard sounds like a triggered kick to me, I could be wrong.
 
We tried a couple things. First we put just a small blanket at the bottem and pillows around the drum for a bass trap. This sucked so we moved the mic out 2 inches and put and took the trap away and the blanket. This sucked more so we put the blanket and a pillow in and tightened the head a ton 'til it was as punchy as we could get. this sounded the best with the mic about 4 inches away from the beater but we still had this maxing problem. When we took the mic out of the drum completely the problem went away, but then the drum sounded like shit. I'll try tightening anything loose but It doesn't sound like thats what is doing it.

We are a bit new to this so sorry if it is stupid that I ask but what is a triggered kick?
 
A trigger is an attachment that goes on to the drum. It works like a sensor to record the event when the drum vibrates. It gets plugged in to a module that replaces your acoustic drum sound with a pre-modeled drum sound. In this way, you could get your kick drum to sound like any variety of kick in the sound module, and/or you can probably use it to trigger any other sound, like cymbals, vibraslap, snare, rack toms, whatever. The trigger just takes the events from the performance so you can replace the acoustic sound of the kit entirely. It can be finicky to set the sensitivity of those things properly. (eg. the guy hits the snare once, and it records 3 separate 64th note events, or the bass player makes the snare head vibrate enough that a stray snare hit gets triggered while you're doing a fill on the toms. Fun stuff.)

What kind of head/s are on the kick drum? I've got a Beta 52 that I use, and I find that it's very scooped. Lots of bass, lots of high end, no mids. Sounded like wet cardboard until I got rid of the Remo Powerstroke head.


sl
 
Farview said:
The lamb of god stuff that I heard sounds like a triggered kick to me, I could be wrong.
Click to expand...

Devin Townsend produced that one.
He invariably uses the Soundreplacer program (i.e.triggers).

As for your distortion woes.
Be sure that you have only 1 preamp ihn the chain.
And make sure you give your self plenty of headroom on the meter.
If youre still having problems at that point then might i suggest purchasing a program called Drumagog.
 
triggers and drumagog are for sissies.




haha just kidding.

what do you mean by "maxing" exactly?? can you describe the sound any more??
 
Ok bassicaly the bass drum sounds as punchy and well balanced as i want but when it is hit it sounds like very fuzzy at the peak of the hit, like as if it were maxing. But there is no signal that shows that it is maxing. What else do you need to know?
 
most bands of that genre use triggered drums. it annoys the hell out of me.
 
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