Last night I tried out the SIlver Bullet drum pack at a show just for fun. So far I have only used them on toms. I did not expect much of them because they are so cheap. What I really wanted to know about them is how they compared with my beta 98's which are considerably more expensive (About 25 times more expensive). I raqn them on a good quality PA in a room that I am very familiar with. In this room I have used the Audix micro's, Shure beta 98's and beta 56's, Sennheiser 604's and 421's and even my favorite old EV 408's. What I found last night was extremely surprising to me. Last night I used them on 6 bands using kits ranging from a crappy little yamaha Rydeen and a chepy Pearl Forum kit all the way to a nicer DW, Orange County and C&C kit. Basically, these mics impressed the hell out of me on toms. In my opinion they were MUCH nicer than ALL of the mics I listed above on toms. The low end on the toms was absolutely amazing, the highs on the stick attack was nice and present, and the mids had a nice little dip that is commonly eq'ed on tom mics. Basically I really had to run the mics fairly flat, and on the nicer tuned kits I had to start dipping lows that normally need a nice little boost. Basically, these were the first time I have ever had a tom mic that was really just about perfect right out the gate. Even on the nasty kits they still sounded great. Based on my experience I want to try one on kick, but I am afraid that it will be too big and as a result be hard to manage. I have a feeling that on some snares they may be incredible, but on other snares it may be too tilted of a sound and not the right choice. For the way I like to run overheads in a PA, which is full bore with some nice compression and used as a whole kit mic and not just cymbals, they may trun out to be great. The only thing I am worried about on overheads so far is that they may not offer enough detail or dimension. So far though those are only guesses based on last nights use since as of yet I have only used them on toms. Every one of the headlining drummers asked me about the mics last night since they are small and look different than what they are used to, and because all of the drummers form the touring bands recognized how bad the opening bands kits were, but loved the sound of the toms anyhow.
At this point I am absolutely blown away. I expected them to be sub par due to their extremely low cost. Part of me almost wanted to not like them based on that, but from the second I pushed the first fader I knew I was probably about to buy more. At this point I will probably start with ordering 1 more set for the studio and 6 more sets for my 6 live mic packs for rentals. I did order four of the original Karma mics and was not impressed at all. Any time they got near anything loud they would distort like mad and were unusable anywhere near a drum set. The newere ones rated for the higher SPL's however showed no hint of stress last night, and require very little gain. A PA is certainly not the best place to analyze a mic to see how noisy it is, but last night I heard no noise that I could attribute to mic or preamp. Once I get a chance to use them in the studio I will be able to check that a lot better since my console is dead silent. The other thing that I did notice is that they have a very hot output. On toms I needed very little gain on a padded channel. Preamp nopise should certainly not be an issue with these little guys. At $80 for a 7 mic set and a cute little case for them, I thik these mics are an absolute steal.
