bleeding toms

[kaminari13]

hope someone can give me some advice
firstly i need some decent tom mics ,i need some pretty direct mics that dont pick up much bleed shure beta 56s? i know the beta 52 is not so popular as a bd mic other choices are sennheiser e904s or e604s or some audix`s anybody out there who can rate this stuff?(havn´t found info elsewhere)
my other problem is compressing with snares and bass drums ,how do i get a healthy signal from a drummer whos hits variate greatly ,if i compress wont it make gateing really difficult with the background noise bumped up? if i gate to the track i cant undo any mistakes ,if i take the raw signal i would have to be pretty low to make up for the extra hard hits (most often with a crash together)
does it make sense to compress a snare (gateing makes little splashes of high hat bleed)

 

[Ironklad Audio]

wow

i don't know where to start

i'll let glen or farview or someone handle this

 

[Sonixx]

gate 1st, then compress

take a look at TSM411 for toms. excellent price/performance

 

[Han]

I don't gate anything, don't compress either and I have no complains about my drumsound.

BTW, I use MD421's on toms and an M201 on snare.

 

[DM1]

how do i get a healthy signal from a drummer whos hits variate greatly

It doesn't really answer your question, but something else to think about is drum replacement. I have little piezo pickups on my snare and kick drum. They don't pick up any useful sound, but I get a little spike every time the drum is hit, and I can run that through Drumagog or KTDrumtrigger and get a super-clean sampled drum track.

It's not appropriate for all styles of playing, but when it works, it works well.

if i compress wont it make gateing really difficult with the background noise bumped up? if i gate to the track i cant undo any mistakes

Ya, definitely don't gate to the track. It sounds like the drummer you're recording is erratic, so you need all the leeway you can get.

does it make sense to compress a snare (gateing makes little splashes of high hat bleed)

You can sometimes use the snare drum mic itself as a trigger. Gate it really aggresively, fast attack, short hold and release, and send the resulting signal to Drumagog

 

[Farview]

Beta 52's make great kick drum mics. You have to place them just inside the hole in the front head.

I use Sennheiser 604's and 421's on toms.

If the drummer doesn't have his dynamics under control, you will have problems no matter what mics you use. When you have a good drummer that plays with the appropriate dynamics, you don't have to gate anything.