EQing the Drum Mics

[pchorman]

Pardon the cross-forum post, but the Drum forum users left me high and dry.

I'd like to know whether most of you who record drums bother with EQ adjustments for the various drum and cymbal types, or do you keep things relatively flat so as not to color the sound. In other words, for micing the kick drum for example, do you suppress all highs and boost the lows, or leave things level on the tone or EQ settings? Some people may do just the opposite for a high-frequency cymbal, as another example.

As a guitar player with very few hours experience recording drummers, I'm just looking for a time saving tip.

Thanks much

 

[tubedude]

gobbledeegookasnooka

On kick I ususally roll out alot of mud around the 300-400mhz, as much as -10db, depending... sweep through with a narrow Q and you'll find the area you want to kill, and then widen the q till it sounds nice.
Snare- add a tad around 50-120hz if it sounds thin
overheads- kill the mud, again, in the 300hz range, add a little around 6 or 12k, and even poke around up higher and see what happens.
Buy a big tube and record everything inside of it for that warm tube sound. C7sus invented this new and growing style of recording, and no eq, compression or effects are EVER needed, EVER, no matter what.
Make sure also that if you have toms mic'ed as well and a stereo overhead, that you pan the tom mics to the same place that you hear them in the overheads.

 

[pchorman]

meckalecka hi mecka hiney ho

yea, but...but...

I ain't got no Q control, just the basic Bass, Mid, and Treble tone controls on the PA, from which the record output signal is used to record the drummer (the only way I can put 4 mics on him and not use more than a channel of the analog 4-track). With the drummer right in the same room as us it's pretty hard to isolate his sound and tweak him up EQ-wise. So you obviously finetune the various drum tones, but under the conditions in which we're stuck, would you just flatten them out across the board or attempt to tailor each mic setting?

What do most of you do?

 

[PapillonIrl]

The really low frequencies from the bass drum can cause problems...so I suppose in your situation (I could be wrong on this but if I am I will be corrected) you could put the bass drum mic pretty close to the beater (say 1-2 inches) at a slight angle. Maybe this will not give the lower frequencies time to be picked up. I don't think your bog standard bass eq will cut out frequencys as low as the ones you want to cut.

Am I wrong on this hr guru's ?

 

[tubedude]

ouch.

Hmmm... things get twisted...
any chance of obtaining a cheap dual channel parametric? Actually a dual 31 band grahic will do it, too... Alesis has a dual for like $200. CHeap. MIght sound cheap too, but not as bad as the boards EQ, and it will be functional.
Are you mic'ing kick-snare-ana-pair?
Or, sell the 4 track and get a decent program. Most have EQ and everything else you could want.
Not much you can do otherwise, other than tuning the drums themselves like you need them, which should be a given anyway
Paul