Drum Mic suggestions

[guitaristic]

also how are you liking the tascam? I am considering getting one soon.

It's great! Good quality for the price. I paid $300 for mine, which came with Cubase and a nice set of headphones. No complaints here I'd recommend it if you're thinking about getting one!

 

[LDS]

Both the original poster and I have it. I really like it. I chose it because it has 8 xlr inputs, and was in my price range (read: cheap). There are also 2 trs inputs on the front for guitar or line in. I don't remember how they say you can do 16 at a time, but there aren't 16 physical inputs on the device.

8 XLR on the front
2 instrument/line inputs on the front
4 balanced line inputs on the rear
1 digital input (Left and Right) on the rear


So, technically, I guess that's 16 "channels" but most of the stuff I've read claims 14 usable.

I picked one up last week and used to for the first time last night. It's for recording on location, and it went very well.

Interestingly enough, and as an attempt to stay on topic, we ended up getting a good drum sound with the room mic, even though there were 3 other mics on the kit.

 

[grimtraveller]

Interestingly enough, and as an attempt to stay on topic, we ended up getting a good drum sound with the room mic, even though there were 3 other mics on the kit.

Much to my surprize, I've found this over the last few weeks too. Which is good coz now I can go from 1-9 mics, depending on the weather.

 

[ProjectHellCow]

What ever works best for you guys, I think it sounds pretty good myself. Just checked out your guys home page, looks like you lot are having some fun. It's good to see some fellow metal heads on board makes me wish we would have documented our studio antics as well, good times man, good times.

Bah! I was looking for the rock on smiley... this board doesn't have it so Rock on!

 

[thebigcheese]

I know the OP is pretty set on the CAD mic package, but I'm going to toss in my experience here in saying that less is definitely more. I had a Nady mic package, which is probably fairly similar to the CAD package, and found that the kick mic was easily the worst part of the kit. I always had to crank the low end on it to get a usable sound. The overheads were alright, but they also required a fair amount of EQing to get anything decent out of them. On my band's web site (I think there's a link in my signature), we have a song called "Shells" that I recorded with the Nady package. I recorded it with the whole kit--overheads, kick, snare, and tom mics--but wound up deleting all the tom tracks (maybe even the snare track) and EQing the overheads. These days, I generally get most of my snare sound from the overheads with a little bit of a close mic mixed in for some added smackiness. I still mic the kick, though, using an Audix D6. I wouldn't use that mic for jazz or something where you want the kick to sound like an actual drum, but when you're doing rock and you just want it to thump with a little click in there, it's perfect. As others have said, the drummer is probably more important than the mics.

On the other hand, if you're not the drummer and you're planning on having lots of bands come in and record with their drummers, then you probably would be better off with mics on everything because the drummers very well might suck. If you are the drummer, though, and you're only recording yourself, I'd just stick with practicing and listening back to your recordings to see what you need to do better.

And don't listen to people at Guitar Center when they tell you you need all kinds of mics. I started working there and tried to tell someone he only needed 4 mics for drums and everyone got on my case about it because they're all a bunch of idiots. So now I will probably tell people they need 8 mics unless no one else is around.

 

[Bitter Dawn]

And don't listen to people at Guitar Center when they tell you you need all kinds of mics. I started working there and tried to tell someone he only needed 4 mics for drums and everyone got on my case about it because they're all a bunch of idiots. So now I will probably tell people they need 8 mics unless no one else is around.

That's brutal. I've never heard any thing good about that company so, I've always ensured to avoid them. I imagine the OP has a nice array of opinions by now, hopefully they will find some thing that works best for them.

 

[thebigcheese]

I mean, they do otherwise have some decent opinions. The guys at my GC are generally pretty good guys, though I think it's kind of a rare GC where people actually have some idea what they're talking about and have been around for a while. Most of them do actually record or DJ and have some honest suggestions about mics, but I don't think any of them have really bothered to try to get a proper recording with fewer mics. They record at home using lots of mics because that's how they think it's done, though in fairness, usually when you see pictures of a recording setup in a magazine, they do have lots of mics up. I would guess that they don't end up using a lot of them, they just want to have options later in case something is missing. I guess if I had the money and desire to stick 5 mics on everything then I would. You can always cut down later, but you can't add in what you don't have.

 

[ez_willis]

And don't listen to people at Guitar Center when they tell you you need all kinds of mics. I started working there and tried to tell someone he only needed 4 mics for drums and everyone got on my case about it because they're all a bunch of idiots.

or they all would rather sell 8 mics instead of 4.