How do you EQ your drums?

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coolsoundman

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How do you guys EQ your kit? Currently I have my drums mic'ed and they are sent to two buses on my sound board mixer. Of course my snare, kick are centered and two overheads are panned left and right with the toms panning from left to right. With only two sub channels being sent to my daw, I have the inserts on my mixer, but only one EQ with two channels. How do you guys EQ your kit and how or what should I EQ?
Thanks for the suggestions.
 
I start by rolling off the excessive low end on the kick, then I usually boost around 100 hz to get a tight but bassy sound, and I usually cut somewhere around 400 hz to get rid of the cardboard sound.

Snare I usually don't do much eq'ing to, I just try to get it to sound good before tracking. But I do usually cut around 100 hz and boost around 5k, but it really depends on what the recording needs.

Toms I usually boost lower then 100 hz and try to cut out some of the dull cardboard sound.

Overheads, I like to cut out all the low end and a lot of mids and just have really bright briddle sounding cymbals.
 
Let's see, for the kick I pan to center and use the main mic blended with the subkick. The subkick is about 1/3 the level of the main mic (a Superlux FK-2). I set the highs to zero, the mids to zero and the lows to zero I think.

On the snare, it's also panned center. I set the EQ somewhere around zero on this too. I tune the snare very well, and use either a 57 or a Superlux ECO-H6A.

Toms are panned from small to large and sent to a stereo bus pair. I use 57's on all the toms and set the EQ right in the middle of the detent for each knob. I guess that would be zero, right?

Overheads are panned the same as the toms and sent to a stereo bus pair. I use MXL 603s. EQ is flat here, too.

Well, that's how I do it. After years and years of playing around with EQ and wondering why I could never get it right, I finally gave up on EQ and tried good mics and good mic positions. My drums have NEVER sounded better in my life.

EQ is not for enhancing the sound. It is for fixing a problem.
 
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