Looking for guidance with live micing drums

[0sparky0]

Hey all! This is my forst post here after reading with great interest numerous other threads on the site. You all sound so well versed in the magic of recording and live sound that I may not fully understand your answers to my questions...I am a drummer, not an engineer. I play in a modern rock band with a fairly large kit. The drums use very thin shells of maple, die cast hoops, Attack 2-ply coated batters and single ply ebony reso heads. I, thanks in great part to comments on this site, have spent a huge amount of time tuning them in all sorts of ways, most recently trying the 'tune to a note on the piano method'. The drums sound great in most tunings acoustically, and also when run through our board/system at rehearsal. Our bass player has gates, compression, eq, etc., which I know little about, that we run the kit through in our own space. What I do know is that I have internally mounted Sennheiser 604's in the rack toms, an Audix D6 on the kick and use a Sure Beta 52 (kick mic, maybe it's the 56)which brings me to my question. After following the guidance form this forum and tuning the drums beautifully, I get them all plugged in and set to play, and the bass player asks me to put tape all over the drums to keep them from resonating etc. We have a tiny practice space so there is plenty to cause sympathetic vibration everywhere. Once taped up on the reso side and with Zero-Rings on the batters, the kit was great. This past Saturday we played an outdoor show using someone else's board/sound system(without the benefit of eq, noise gate and compression) and one of the toms in particular was causing feedback due to the sympathetic vibes. So once again, someone is asking me to put tape on it...I really would prefer to use the most natural tone of the drums when micing in the future, can you guys please offer some guidelines I might employ in the future that will allow the drums to breathe and not be the cause of so much grief? Is there some specific equipment I should be using, certain tricks on the board.. Thanks in advance for listening and any advice you can offer!

Sparks.

 

[TexRoadkill]

Putting some tape on the heads is a pretty common fix. I would take the mics out of the drums and use some stands but that's my preference.

It sounds like you want everything setup so you don't have to make any adjustments before performing and that just isn't possible with acoustic instruments. A few degrees of sudden temperature differences can change things alot.