SM-58 for the Kick??

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powderfinger

powderfinger

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Would an SM-58 do a decent job recording the kick drum....or would that be a bad idea in terms of quality?
 
what other mics do you have?

if the 58 is all that you have access to, I think that you can get by with it and get some decent results. Obviously, best case scenario is that you get a 'dedicated' kick mic (eg. ADK D112, Shure Beta52).

The bass drum mic in the AudioTechnica kit pac is very similar to a 58 - and I've gotten pretty good results using this in the past....


bottom line - you won't know 'till you try. experiement and see how it sounds - it you like - then go ahead and use - if you don't like - start exploring other options...
 
mic

i've got a 58, but I think it'll only work for vocals.
that's my opinion (watch it i'm a newbie :) )
 
i'm getting a 57 for the snare , and will have some octavas for the overheads..........i was thinking i'd use a spare 58 for the kick, but maybe that's not a good idea
 
powderfinger said:
Would an SM-58 do a decent job recording the kick drum....or would that be a bad idea in terms of quality?

Yes, a 58 will work for a Kick mic.
Do you like the Red Hot Chili Peppers kick drum sound on the song Suck my Kiss?

Well, that's a 57...and a 58's essentially the same mic.



Tim
 
save up $190 bucks and buy your self a shure beta 52. you will be glad that you did. but if you have to use the 58 for the kick, then it will do ok. (for jazz and demo stuff.)

zeke
 
ZEKE SAYER said:
save up $190 bucks and buy your self a shure beta 52. you will be glad that you did. but if you have to use the 58 for the kick, then it will do ok. (for jazz and demo stuff.)

zeke

I just bought a new beta 52 from an ebay company .......$149.00 including shipping and handling. A guy can mess with eq and mic placement all day on a 57 or 58 trying to get the sound right..... or he can just stick a real kick drum mic in there and turn the recorder on. There really is a difference between using the right stuff for the right application.

As far as which is better.... among Kick mics...... I don't know. I'd have to have one of each in my studio to know.
 
i don't know about that... when i put a 58 inside my kick drum, it's the best sound i've ever gotten out of it. it sounds perfect no matter how i place it inside the drum, with no eq. that's way more than i can say about my experiences with a D112 - spent the whole day fiddling with placement and ended up with a sound nowhere near as nice as a 58.
it just happens to agree with my kick drum, its tuning, its head, and the beater, i guess. there's tons of "click" and yet still a really solid low-end tone on it.
i've never been able to get that good of a sound with either of the "real" kick mics i've tried (ATM 25 and D112). they both seem to lack that rock "click" quality.


the only problem is, i play hard, so every 3-4 hits or so, the mic will distort. so i can't REALLY use a 58 inside the kick... i wish i could, it sounds so damn good when it works.
 
i don't know about that... when i put a 58 inside my kick drum, it's the best sound i've ever gotten out of it. it sounds perfect no matter how i place it inside the drum, with no eq. that's way more than i can say about my experiences with a D112 - spent the whole day fiddling with placement and ended up with a sound nowhere near as nice as a 58.

LOL......
 
Hi there, I just used a 58 on a recording this weekend and it worked great. The low freq responce on a 57 is 40 Hz and I think a 58 is 0 Hz. It's a tough mic. I thought the sound on it was just fine. I'll post the song to nowhere.radio and you can listen for yourself....the song has had no mastering or eq'ing of anysort and was recorded flat.
Jason
 
can you explain what's so funny exactly?

i'm just saying it worked for me, and it happened to work even better than a D112 on my kick drum.


if it doesn't work for you, that's not my problem. i can easily believe that my case is an isolated incident.
 
all i have is a 58, for my kick, I got better results 6" infront of the bass hole. instead inside the kick.
 
bleyrad said:
can you explain what's so funny exactly?

i'm just saying it worked for me, and it happened to work even better than a D112 on my kick drum.

if it doesn't work for you, that's not my problem. i can easily believe that my case is an isolated incident.

I'm with you here......some people around here (no names mentioned!!) like to shout the party line - which, in this case, would be that you need a dedicated bass drum mic to get a good bass drum sound....

I'm sure that you've gotten good sounds with your sm58 - heck I"ve gotten good bass drum sounds with an AudioTechnica drum kit-pac bass drum mic....

hey kjam22 - we're here to learn and share ideas, not to demean other peoples posts. go act all high, mighty, and ever knowing somewhere else, please. practice humility much?
 
I "humbly" submit that "LOL" is not just a real demeaning thing to say. In fact.... if a person were to sit down and write on a piece of paper all of the demeaning statements that another might say.... well I would think that "LOL" is in comparrison not demeaning at all.

I thought it was funny. I thought it was funny that his experience was exactly backwards from mine. I didnt' say anything negative about him, or his experience. I didn't say that I was better than him. Or that my recording practice was better than his. I'll practice a little more humility??? if you will not wear your feelings and emotions on your sholder. Deal??

You know.... a lot of people would mic a kick with an SM58 or SM57 or a Peavey 45 ... or whatever they had to use. It would be interesting to know how many would choose a SM58 over a Beta52 or.....D112?
 
pratt said:
I'm with you here......some people around here (no names mentioned!!) like to shout the party line - which, in this case, would be that you need a dedicated bass drum mic to get a good bass drum sound....


Your original statement was this...... "if the 58 is all that you have access to, I think that you can get by with it and get some decent results. Obviously, best case scenario is that you get a 'dedicated' kick mic (eg. ADK D112, Shure Beta52).

So since both statements came from you ..... I'm assuming that in your mind "decent result" is the same thing as a "good bass drum sound". So decent = good in your way of thinking. OR you changed your mind between posts.

See for me..... decent is inferior to Good. There would be asequence like Real bad, bad, not very good, okay, decent, pretty good, good, real good, fine and excellent. That's my way of thinking about those two words.

:)
 
look , I'm not going to argue with you..

fact is you quoted a post about getting a useable kick sound using a 58 and put three letters 'LOL'. In my world, that is translated as 'Laughing Out Loud'. Now, in the context that those three letters were posted, to me it looked like you were laughing at his post. is that really a stretch??

I'm not going to play your little semantics game distinguishing your definitions of 'decent' and 'good', and I stand by my post that you can get a useable kick sound out of a 58, for HOME-RECORDING (isnt' that what this board is all about)??

of course a dedicated kick-mic (ala D112 or Beta52) is going to probably result in a better that 'DECENT' sound - but you don't need one of those to get a 'useable' sound, especially for HOME RECORDING!!!
 
If I were you ... I wouldn't want to argue either. I mean you've already said......

"The bass drum mic in the AudioTechnica kit pac is very similar to a 58 - and I've gotten pretty good results using this in the past.... "


And in a different post you've said...

"Im sure that you've gotten good sounds with your sm58 - heck I"ve gotten good bass drum sounds with an AudioTechnica drum kit-pac bass drum mic.... "

Which was it ... a good ... or pretty good? Or is there a difference to you?

You don't want to argue.... you just want to call people out.... accuse them of not being humble enough.... or whatever... and then hope that they don't have anything to say back. Right? That is not a game we are going to play. If you don't want an argument.... then don't start one.
 
Seriously.... you can call it a semantics game if you want. ..... but you should consider the meaning of the words..... decent, usable, good, and pretty good. To me they do not all mean the same thing.
 
Yes, I really like using a 58!

Boy, you guys sure talk a lot about unrelated stuff.....

I've been messing around with mic'ing my kick for a LONG time and just recently read about using a 58 in one of the drum forums and boy it made a huge improvement from my D112. The article I read said to put it inside the head, 3-4" from where the beater hits and at an angle to where the beater hits. I finally got much closer to the "perfect" kick sound that I hear on most professionally recorded songs. I only had to mess around with the amount of dampening inside the kick to get rid of an excessive ring.

I can believe that you'd get different results with different drums, heads, dampening, etc.
 
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