Drum Mic suggestions

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guitaristic

guitaristic

prophet of Dave
Ok, so here's my situation--

I've been researching home recording for the past 4 months or so, and am now getting my equipment. Right now, I'm just getting the basics, and not going for anything particularly high-priced with equipment right now (college student :D)

I've recently gotten a Tascam 1641 interface, shure 57, and Cubase. I'm now looking at drum mics, and I'm open to any suggestions. One set that I was considering was the CAD Pro 7 piece set. Any advice?
 
You could do worse than the CAD pack. One of the users here gets great results with the CAD mics.

What's your budget and what type of music do you want to record?
 
If you google that mic set with the word review after it you may get your answer...I just did a search and it seems like the snare mic and kick drum mic are not very good.

Seems the overheads are the best part of the package however you can always replace the snare mic with your 57.

Then later on upgrade your kick drum mic.

At least for the $200 you will end up with some decent overheads and then try and upgrade kick drum mic later on.

Plus the mics may end up being better than some people reviewed and maybe they sound half decent...either way its a great price for a starter drum mic set.
 
guitaristic said:
One set that I was considering was the CAD Pro 7 piece set. Any advice?
Click to expand...

i just got two TM211's for my toms, which are included in that 7 piece package. I use an sm57 on the snare, a beta52 on the kick, and two octava mc012's for the oh's.
 
I think its a good time for you to reflect on what you want to do, and how you want to be doing it ten years from now.

You may want to pick up a single nice microphone at a time, carefully chosen for its usefulness on multiple sources. It will cost you more up front, but the upside is you'll only buy once.

Drum mic packs are very rarely that.

For now: Kick drum, snare, and overheads.

Mic toms later when you have the main four mics worked out in your room. Properly played drums and properly placed microphones will pick up all the toms you need.

I'll tell you about what I have experience with, but YMMV.

On kick I use a D-112. I can also use an RE-20. An RE-20 is a great choice for you because it also happens to be a fantastic vocal mic and cabinet mic. It has very little proximity effect, and is condenser-like in it's clarity that is atypical of many dynamics.

Snare: SM-57, Audix i5, MD-421... There are many. I'd go with the MD-421, it's great for cabs, toms, and screamo vocals. I use both a dynamic and a condenser. On the condenser side of things, lots of people like the AKG 414 on snare, but I think the inexpensive Studio Projects B1 sounds good and can take the spl.

Overheads: There are quite a few nice SDC mics to choose from. Pick some that suit your room. I use josephson C42s. I also use a pair of multipattern LDCs; moderately priced models can be had from Shure and AKG.

Throw a ribbon in there and you have a fairly well-rounded mic cabinet.
 
I like to use 2 sm57's for the snare, Sennheiser 602 for kick, Audio-Technica AT4041 on the hi hat if i mic the hi hat at all(normally tend not to mic the hi hat),sennheiser 421's for all toms, AKG 414's for overhead, and Neumann km184 if the studio has them available or if recording at my house i use CAD CM217's for ORTF's
 
Darn I didn't see it.:(
I've got to look more on that forum. I hardly skim through it on a weekly basic.



:cool:
 
Use what you have I say. Right now I have 1 condenser mic and 2 dynamic mics. I won't go into details because it really doesn't make much difference in a low budget scenario, just whatever you can get your hands on. I put the better dynamic kind of near the kick drum, maybe 6" away, the crappy one between the snare and hat but aimed at the snare, and the condenser hanging up top to get the cymbal and tom.

Mono drums works fine for me, but I record in stereo just for accoustic reasons of sounds garbling each other, just panning the kick slightly off from the snare/hat and leaving the overhead centered makes it sound cool to me. Hey I'm no pro engineer either but it's a pretty simple setup and the idea of heavily panned drums does not do it for me. I mean... it's not as if the right side cymbal is all the way on one side of the room and the left side cymbal is all the way on the other. Try to just get what it sounds like in the room (condenser) and beef up the kick and snare a bit (dynamic) and work from there.

A 7 drum-mic set is a costly investment and also requires quite a high end mixer to take advantage of all those mics. I would think to just keep it kind of simple at first and build up as you go.

Another tip... I recently got some 'isolation headphones' made by vic firth and they are awesome for making your drum mic mix, because you can't hear the room at all while you are playing (you can't even hear a lawnmower right next to you it's just a dull background buzz) These are the same sort of things small-plane pilots wear to cut out the noise of the propeller so they don't go deaf.... but they have a feed from the mixing board... cool stuff. All you hear is the exact mix that's going onto the track. Very cool novelty item. Just something you may want to look into.
 
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In the 50's they'd record drums with one mic.

In the 70's they went to using a mic on every drum, maybe even two on some drums like the snare.

You don't need lots of mics to get a pro sound. I'd rather have just a few expensive sounding mics than lots of cheap sounding ones. I wouldn't buy a drum pack, I'd buy a few studio standard mics that I could use for lots of things.

Here's a good read on recording drums with 3 mics:
http://www.mercenary.com/3micdrumstuf.html

Most of it is having a good sounding set in the first place and knowing how to play:

If it doesn't sound great with only one mic, there's something wrong that you need to fix before you add any more mics!
 
dintymoore said:
In the 50's they'd record drums with one mic.

In the 70's they went to using a mic on every drum, maybe even two on some drums like the snare.

You don't need lots of mics to get a pro sound. I'd rather have just a few expensive sounding mics than lots of cheap sounding ones. I wouldn't buy a drum pack, I'd buy a few studio standard mics that I could use for lots of things.

Here's a good read on recording drums with 3 mics:
http://www.mercenary.com/3micdrumstuf.html

Most of it is having a good sounding set in the first place and knowing how to play:





If it doesn't sound great with only one mic, there's something wrong that you need to fix before you add any more mics!
Click to expand...


That is the most awesome example of 'less-is-more'. One good mic in the sweet spot in the room and everything is coming in loud n clear. That drummer is quite talented too keeping his hit velocities even. If he was more agressive you might have gotten cymbal splash or high hat overbearing everything, but he was tight.

I believe the ultimate goal of making a recording is to make it sound like it sounds to the person playing it hears. Makes me want to strap a couple of mics to a beer-hat as my stereo ears and see how that goes. Not just for drums. If it sounds like it sounded to you when you were playing it, you know you are doing things right.
 
AbuseTheMuses said:
That is the most awesome example of 'less-is-more'. One good mic in the sweet spot in the room and everything is coming in loud n clear. That drummer is quite talented too keeping his hit velocities even.
Click to expand...

yeah, when the room sucks, the kit isn't stellar, and the drummer ain't great, the one mic thing probably won't work. definitley wouldn't hurt to try though.
 
Yeah I've read a LOT of reviews about it...some have been 5 stars while others have been awful. I'm definitely planning on using my sm57 on the snare! The kick didn't get reviewed too great, but I think I'm going to take my chances. I'm actually getting the chance to get the kit for $150, so I'm planning on going for it. The overheads alone are each $50 by themselves, so it's not a bad deal imo.

I'm going to record a mix of alt rock/reggae/pop songs. Nothing too heavy! And to answer another question, I've got a good room, good set, and my drumming chops are somewhere between decent and good lol.
 
dintymoore said:
In the 50's they'd record drums with one mic.

In the 70's they went to using a mic on every drum, maybe even two on some drums like the snare.

You don't need lots of mics to get a pro sound. I'd rather have just a few expensive sounding mics than lots of cheap sounding ones. I wouldn't buy a drum pack, I'd buy a few studio standard mics that I could use for lots of things.

Here's a good read on recording drums with 3 mics:
http://www.mercenary.com/3micdrumstuf.html

Most of it is having a good sounding set in the first place and knowing how to play:

If it doesn't sound great with only one mic, there's something wrong that you need to fix before you add any more mics!
Click to expand...


And that video was awesome! Very interesting! I liked the sound he was able to get.
 
ez_willis said:
yeah, when the room sucks, the kit isn't stellar, and the drummer ain't great, the one mic thing probably won't work. definitley wouldn't hurt to try though.
Click to expand...


When there's that much wrong it's a good day to do something else! :)

I think the reason that that one mic video worked for that guy was largely because when he played, he had a usable ratio of hi hat to snare to kick. I think that shows experience. Beginners do not play like that.

There's a lot of times when people get into a mic on the hi hat and one on each tom when it's actually to correct drummers who can't do that, and when I hear of novices "needing" all these mics I always (call me cynical but it's from experience) suspect that it's because of a drummer who doesn't play with a usable ratio. Usually it's the hi hat it too loud and the kick is too wimpy.

I think that when you close mic anything the sound and importance of the room is much less than many people think. If you have a really great sounding source, like a great singer, you could record in most any bedroom and add digital reverb and no one would bat an eye.
 
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