does anyone mic the bottom

[mrface2112]

it depends on the song and the sound i want. sometimes i do, most often i don't. like others, i tend to go for an LDC about 6in from the shell of the snare, aiming at the side. that's a nice woody crack there.

i've taken a shine to taping an MXL603 to one of my shure 545's (pre-sm57) and putting them both on top of the snare, side by side. that's a really neat sound too. lots of body and mids from the 545 and lots of whack and top end from the 603.


cheers,
wade

 

[Jburn34]

I mic the side a lot of times (try a SP C1) to get that nice rattle sound. I've had a lot better luck with the side than with the bottom. To be honest, though, I usually just use SoundReplacer now.

 

[mrface2112]

< try a SP C1 >

i've used the SP B1 in that role to great success. in fact, that's one of my favorite uses for the B1.


cheers,
wade

 

[uncle_j73]

snare bottom

I got to use an Audio Technica AT835b condenser on the bottom of my Tama steel snare on a project a few months ago and it sounded awesome. I rarley hear such a good sounding bottom snare sound. Mixed it in with an SM58 on the top and wow.

 

[johnsuitcase]

I've tracked bottom mics a few times, never used it in a mix, though. I think if you are careful about top mic selection and placement, the drum is properly tuned, and you use compression correctly, you can get the best sound from the top head. The overheads should pick up a lot, as well, if they're properly placed.

My big problem with the bottom is that it seems (to me) to "fuzz up" fast rolls and ghost notes. The snare should have nice body, but that's more of a compression issue, in my experience (and also depends on how tight the snare heads are, and how the drummer hits it!). I try to be very careful to preserve the clarity of the attack first, then fill in behind it, if that makes sense...

 

[mixsit]

Sometimes... but I find micing the side of the snare to be much more useful. An SM57 should be fine. Put the mic near one of the small holes in the snare shell, but angle it enough so the air doesn't make the mic pop. I find this is a better sound than the underside of the snare.

Except for the hole. I've never paid any attention to it. Does it do anything tone wise? I figured it would just be a blast of air..

Wayne

 

[billmcdonald]

What is this "phase" that you guys keep talking about? Sorry, Im new to this

 

[hugo gutierrez]

Hi, I really like the bottom of the snare, I usually use a SM57 or MD421 and put it on the side and aimed to the center of the membrane, that's because the bottom of the membranes and the snare is on the center of itself.

 

[hugo gutierrez]

recording the bottom

I usually record the bottom positioning a SM57 or MD421 near one side of the snare and aimed it to the center, that's because the bottom of the snare is on the center of the membrane.

 

[jake-owa]

What is this "phase" that you guys keep talking about? Sorry, Im new to this

In this case it refers to the polarity of the mic. + is switched to -. If you don't have phase reverse on your preamp or mixer your software can do it ...called invert in that case. If you are analog you can make a cable and switch the hot and cold terminals on one end of the cable.

Think about the diaphram of the mic and speaker reproducing the sound. If you overlay two mic signals one moving inward and one moving outward they will be cancelling eachother out to some degree depending on how far the mics are from the sgnal source. The speaker is pushing and pulling against itself, causing partial filtering of the outputted signal. As mentioned above it's always a good idea to check both inverted and normal to see if the sound is actually better with the bottom mic phase inverted.

Usually you will notice slightly more bottom end in the signal when the mics are more in phase. There is no such thing as perfectly aligning the mics in true phase. The mics are going to be at different spots on the waveform so some compromise is always going to happen...unless you have one of those spendy phase knobbie boxes that do partial phase correction rather than flipping polarity. Even then you are just lining the waves as in peak to valley and you don't know that you are on the same exact spot of the waveform.

It gets a lot more complicated than that...