How many mics do you use?

  • Thread starter Thread starter matt_barlow
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How many mics do you use?

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    Votes: 2 2.8%
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    Votes: 5 7.0%
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    Votes: 17 23.9%
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    Votes: 3 4.2%
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  • 12 or more

    Votes: 2 2.8%

  • Total voters
    71
M

matt_barlow

New member
I was wandering how many mics you use while recording and performing?
 
generally 9 on my five peice kit
1 - kick
2 - snare1
3 - snare 2
4 - hats
5 - tom1
6 - tom2
7 - tom3
8 - overhead
9 - overhead

sometimes i may double mic the kick to
rOSH
 
Usually 8 on a six piece

2 x Overheads
Kick
Snare
4x Toms.

I don't bother with the hats for 3 reasons.
1. I don't have a quality SD condenser spare that will do it justice.
2. Can only record 8 tracks at a time simaltaneously at this stage.
3. Always get heaps of hats through the overheads anyway.

Mark
 
I've been using 6.

SM57 on snare (or AKG d770)
AKG D770s on toms and kick
C1000 as an overhead

Mike
 
4-
2 mxl603s as overheads
1 studio projects c3 on kick
1 akg d3700 or sennheiser e604 on snare

a lot can be done with this setup, i just am not competent enough to get the best from it yet, but i know it has a lot of potential, and i got good sounds from the beginning.

adriano
 
It depends. A friend of mine that I record with time to time has a double bass, four rack toms and a floor tom, two crash cymbals, a china boy and ride and of course a hi hat, I put up;
A D-112 in each kick
SM-57 on the snare
A C-1000 between each group of two rack toms
A C-3000 on the floor tom
A spaced pair of Octava MC-012's over head
Two AT-4033's about 5' out in front of each kick about 3' from the floor.
That's a total of 10 mics on the drums. On a kit with a single bass I shave two mics from that setup. I'll put one to two mics on guitar amps. Bass always direct.
 
It varies for me. I always like to have room mics, just in case. One song I did had the huge change and in the mix it went from close miced drums to room mics. It sound cool. I used between 2 and 12, just depends on what sound I'm looking for and what mics are available!
 
hey, wally, that's a great idea, i'll try that.
btw, i'll be doing some test recordings this weekend with drums, and i'll try and take the time to make some mp3s for anyone who's interested to listen to and contribute their experience and suggestions for us newbies.

adriano
 
I used to use a full set of mics (2 overheads, 2 snare, kick, each tom...)

but i would spend so much time obsessing over isolation and tweaking each channel, that I would end up getting more flustered than it was worth...

So... I changed to using 3-mics, 2 overheads, and a LDC about 3 feet off the floor and about 5 or 6 feet back. The drum sound I get is very open, well balanced and clean. I just move the overheads around to achieve the balance between snare and cymbols.

I've always been a fan of that open almost "jazzy" quality that a lot of the Quarterstick records artists use (i.e. Rodan, Rachels, June of 44 etc.)
 
I did a drum session yesterday and we used seven mics to get a great sound. The kit was a decnt Pearl, that we made sure sounded great before we miced anything.

Kick-AKG D112 about halfway inside the kick
Snare-SM57 standard setup, can't go wrong
H Tom- Senn. 421 another standard, I've found that farther from the tom is better.
L Tom- Senn. MZh 4**- never used this mic before, a little guy that clips on the drum. The band preferred this over an ATM 25
OH- Two Marshall 603's. Very important to keep their distance from the snare the same. This was done by setting the Oh mic that's over the snare first, then using a gtr cable to measure and place the other mic the same distance. Helps a lot
Room mic- Modified Marshall 2001 about two feet off the ground and three feet from the kit. We'll see how much it gets used.

This above setup sounded great going through the 8 channles of millennia pre that I am borrowing.

ian
 
20 years of drumming & my 2cents

I have had my drums recorded many different ways but my favorite is just the 4 mics kick snare and overheads(my kit is only a 4pce).If the kit is sounding good and the drummer is comfortable then this is the best way for me.In the past having mics all over the place was very distracting and I never thought that the sound of the toms mattered that much(I don't do many jungle beats). So now I do all of my drum tracks like this and go for the over all sound rather than the individual sound of each drum,after all it is a kit of drums that is played as one instrument and not 4 drums played solo. my point great sounding kit + comphy drummer =good preformance great sound hence less mics needed. Of course this is a drummer speaking so we all know what this info is worth.
 
seven:

1) 57 on snare
1) AKG on the Kick
3) Sennheiser E604's on toms
2) SM81's R/L Overheads

I too get plenty of bleed for the hats.....just depends on how much sizzle you need.
 
you won't believe this

I use four or five mics, depending on available channels on the mixer, --kick, snare, and on the toms. no over heads. I get all kinds of bleed for cymbal sounds.

I use a cheap set of CAD NDM 10's and 11's and record it all thru an old peavey powered mixer (as a sub-mix) into a BR-8.

Think it would sound like crap? check out www.mp3.com/brimstone_br7 This is exactly what I used for these songs with this band. (And the kit was a cheap Premier Cabria series).
 
Man, I hear a compressor sucking the life out of yor drums. Other than that, it sounds decent enough.
 
How many mikes

I use 3. A Shure SM57 in the Bass and 2 Radio Shack/Shure 33-3002 overhead on my 5 piece. I get a great John Bonham/J Mascis sound.
 
Track Rat said:
Man, I hear a compressor sucking the life out of yor drums. Other than that, it sounds decent enough.

Damn, you got a great set of ears! I in fact used a compression program to controll the balance between mic bleed, it just seemed to sound the best with the mix thru the monitors.

On my next project, though, I am using less compression to get a more raw, natural sound--more Snot/Step Kings kind of groove.
I'm also thinking of using less mics--just kick, snare and a room kic out front. I think that may work. You think so, too?
 
danondrums said:
I'm also thinking of using less mics--just kick, snare and a room kic out front. I think that may work. You think so, too?
Depends on mics, positioning what sound you want and what style you are recording.

Keijo
 
i here what a lot of you minimalist micers are talking about, and i feel very much the same... i don't so much like the idea of recording each drum to it's own channel (you don't often see guitarists micing each string), imho, you want to capture the kit as a whole rather than as five or six different instruments.... i've "sat in" on drums for a couple of guys projects, and they insisted on micing each drum, i didn't mind so much because the hassle was theres to make it sound like one drum kit rather than someone hiting a tom over here and hats over there and snare somewhere else.... but for my own stuff its always four mics, the classic kick, snare and two over heads
 
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