live drum micing

[slickspoon]

ok, this might be a little of the subject but my friend has debated me about this and im just starting to get involved in the technical part of sound systems and recording so forgive my noviceness(nice wording right?)
at our church we have a 32 channel mixer. our drummer bought a seperate mixer for his 8 mics. so he runs 8 mics to his board and then his board to the mixer. his signal is is really weak when we try to eq through our mains. so his slides on his board are close to being maxed out and his one slide on our main board is craked high too just to get what little bit of sound he has. the guys who hooked it up arent really experienced with these sorta things anyways. i suggested that he needed a preamp because the boards not powered so of coarse the signal wouldnt be strong. they consistedly argued that it wouldnt be needed because you can controll the sound by turning up the knobs and what not. so later when they left i noticed his board had phatom power. so i hooked a condenser up to it and cut it on and it started ringing because they had his board and and the main board cranked. i thought that was proof enough that you needed a pre amp but there steady fighting me. could some one help me if im right and give me something to fight these guys with. im just starting to learn about this stuff so im not positive what the problem is. my theory seem have truth but my inexperience has me second guessing.
if im wrong could someone give me and explaination. thanks

 

[distortedrumble]

what kind of mics is he using on his smaller board? i'm trusting hes using dynamics. as for a preamp....if he has XLR inputs on his board...those are preamps.(XLR inputs have 3 holes inside a black circle on the mixer..just in case you didnt know that) one mixer sending a signal to another mixer shouldnt need a poweramp to enhance the signal. atleast give the drums 2 channels on the main board. turn up the gain on the main board instead of just the slider. this will make his signal louder. have him turn up the gains on his mixer so he doesnt max out his slider either.

and on a side note.....unless your church has 10k members every sunday and yall are broadcast or cable....8 mics on drums is a little overkill dont ya think? but then again, i'm not a drummer.

 

[slickspoon]

im not exactly sure what mics hes usieng but he bought them as a drum mic setup package. yea they are xlrs and the reason for the mics is clarity. he has a light touch and has hes set incredably muffled so he bought the mics and we closed him in to get a cleaner sound. were trying to move to the way of recording also. is that the only suggestion you have about increasing the volume?

 

[timboZ]

at our church we have a 32 channel mixer. our drummer bought a seperate mixer for his 8 mics. so he runs 8 mics to his board and then his board to the mixer

So is the drummer mixing his own drums. How can he tell what they sound like in the house. He should be playing the drums and not mixing. Are all of your 32 channels in use, if not mix the drums on the 32 channel board and get rid of the drummers board. Then you will have control of how the drums sound.
You can also gate the toms and kick, use a compress, change the EQ, reverb, or whatever else needs to be done to get the drums sounding right.