Quantity Vs. Quality

M

Mr. Kelly

New member
I have a question, I have a setup inmind that would involve a d112 for akg on the bass drum, two c418's from akg as overheads and then 4 shure sm57 one for each tom and one on the snare. Sound good? hope so.

My main question is would this be better than having say a kick mic and two good over head and a good mic on the snare, I've got essentially 700 US to spend and I'm wondering if I should go with that setup or if I should get less mics, but of higher quality?
 
Um yeah well I would like them to sound nice, and thats why I'm asking this question. I know higher quality mics sound better but If I hang a mic over my drum kit its probably not going to sound very good, so I'm wondering if haing 7 mics on the kits compared to maybe 4 higher quality is going to be beter.

P.S. Hey Recording Engineer, I don't mean to sound like a dork, but I haven't been on this BBS for long and I have no sweet clue what your answer is.
 
Mr. Kelly,
I think your ideal setup will sound great. I use two AKG c418's for the overhead and they sound great. The D112 is a descent Kick drum mic and SM57 are very reliable. Use the C418 mics to capture your main mix, and then use your other mics to compensate where needed.

[This message has been edited by Fishmed (edited 05-11-2000).]
 
I use a Senheiser 421 (D112 whatever) on kick compressed to tape. a SM57 on Snare (compress to tape) sometimes close mic the toms and two small diaphram condensers as stereo overheads (don't compress to tape).

Not super original but after trying to break the mould a million times I realized why they call it the mould.

I would say deffinetly get 4 mics of high quality, no doubt in my mind. If a song is Tom intensive rent a couple dynamics to record it. Unless you have a good mixing console with phase reverse on it you'll get into big trouble with tons of mics. Phase is so important to getting good fat tones.

experiment with the position of the overheads. Hope that helps.
 
Hmmm, I'm confused now. I'm pretty much set on using the d112 and c418, just because they price is so sweet. 400 US for two c418 and a d112. I figure it would cost me about 600 for another brand, and maybe even more. SO unless anyone has some good setups in mind I guess I'm gonna stick with that. Now what I'm wondering about is the 57's. I'm being told to take the d112 and c418 and then stick a 57 on the snare, but my original idea was that plus a 57 on each tom and maybe the high hats. Now i've got the phase thing to worry about, so should I not bother with the extra 57's? should I have a third over head? should I do that thing that recording engineer suggested and put a 57, or any mic for that matter, behind the bass drum straight up? my head is going to explode. should I though an nt1 behind the bass drum straight up? would that work?

how much do the oktava mc-012 cost? I'm thinking I might just.....
 
Mr. Kelly:

I would normally suggest a matched-pair of Oktava MC-012s from The Sound Room only for your overheads. However, taking into consideration of your given price range, I won't suggest that.

I would suggest a 4-mic set-up for sure. I've not tried two c418s as overheads myself, but have heard from quite a few people who have said they've had pleasant results with them. Some people also use Rode NT-1s.

Bass drum has mixed feelings as well. Most will agree that a Sennheiser 421 or e602?, E/V RE-20 or RE-27 or ?(their around $200US one), Audio technica ATM-25 or Pro25, and AKG D112 are all bass drum mics to consider.

The 4th mic is usually used as a snare mic (SM57s work wonders), but I also suggest instead of using that 4th mic for snare only, you might try putting a condenser (or 57) behind the bass drum at snare and floor tom height, and facing straight-up.
 
Well a matched-pair of Oktava MC-012s from The Sound Room only are $630US. If you can afford it, I most definitely recommend them; they'd be my first choice. Some others to think about are:

*A matched-pair if Crown CM-700s for around $450US. http://www.crownaudio.com/crownaudio/mic_htm/cm.htm#4
*Two Rode NT-1s. I have not used then as overheads myself, but I've seen people report good results with those as well.

If you do, go with the 2 c418s and 1 D112 package, then I suggest you go with your original plan and mic the rest of the drums with 57s.

But if you go with the 4-mic set-up, then I suggest you go with 1 of the 3 overheads above, a bass drum mic (I personally like the AT ATM-25 over the D112; I've owned both). As for the 4th mic, I suggested what I did because you get better definition from the toms and I usually get enough snare with the overheads to a lot of times, a snare mic is usless for me because it just makes the snare far to loud to the rest of the kit when I use it. However, sometimes the snare doesn't cut (especially in heavyier music) so I opt for putting the 4th mic directly on the snare instead. I usually experiment with both.

As for when I do a 3, 4 or individual mic set-up depends on the type of band, what the band wants, and their budget.
 
I ran across a website that could really help you out on the drum-micing debate. This guy is a pro drummer and has some good advice. www.bartelliott.com

[This message has been edited by Buck62 (edited 05-14-2000).]
 
Hey Recording Engineer, check this out. go to http://www.oktava.da.ru/ its the link to the actual factory in Russia that manufactures the mics. go to the prices and enter inof in the compnay section, you can enter bogus info it doesn't e-mail the list to you it just goes to a html link. so anyways go here and check the price. 127 for an oktava mc-012, but it says for resale in Russia only. but still I'm sure its way cheaper than usuall. I'm gonna look into this, I let you know if I find out anything interesting.
 
Thanks for the heads-up Mr. Kelly; I already knew about it though. I found it about a year ago when I was looking for more information on Oktavas because so many people (people whos names I even recognized) from r.a.p. were recommending them left and right.

That's when I talked to Taylor Johnson from The Sound Room on the phone for about a half hour; just listening to everything he knew about Oktava's history and current status, and how he fits into it all.

Well I see they've changed their website quite a bit and added a lot more stuff (and took some stuff out). They use to have the mics posted as "MK" instead of "MC" and used to have the prices out in the open right next to each mic.

It's been at least 6 months since I had last visted the site though.

Let us know anything you find-out or come across.
 
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