Why is my AT pro25 distorting???

[rtzstudios]

I'm doing a little test of various mics on a tom (including a radioshack 33-3032) and I threw my pro25 up and all of the sudden it's distorting. I haven't dropped it or anything. I'm also not clipping the signal, so I'm assumming it's the mic. What's up?

 

[tmix]

It could be the mic cable. I had the same problem on a bad cable when I switched to a hotter output mic. It sounded like a horribly distorted input amp. Another time it was actually the drum head flutter. I had put a new clear 2 ply head on without properly stretching it out and had it tuned low. The mic was actually picking up a crinkling buzzing sound from the head!

Hope you find out whats wrong
tmix
ps: What do you think of the r/s mics? I just bought 4

 

[wjgypsy]

i have seen that sometimes the channel don't need to be cliping to be distoring.....how high do you have you trim know set?

 

[rtzstudios]

It's not the mic cable either. I'm guessing that the diaphragm is fucked! I'm not too happy about that!

The Radio Shack sounds almost exactly like a SM57. The only difference was the 57 was slightly "rounder". This was on a 8" rack tom too, so it may sound different on a bigger tom. The mics I used were...

Sennheiser MD 421
Sennheiser D504 (the R/S mic looks like this one)
Sm57
EV N/D 408
Audio-Technica ATM25
Radio Shack 33-3032

And I was going to use the pro25 too, but it is distorted....

I'll post some sound files in a couple of days.

 

[frist44]

I found the atm pro 25 to do the same thing when i stuck it in the kick drum. I engaged the pad on the preamp and adjusted the gain to the same levels on the recorded and suddenly the distortion was gone and it sounded great. Maybe try another preamp, that is assuming you're not overloading the meters on the recorder. it seems like the drums have a quick response that the meters don't always indicate. You might want to stick a compressor inline and see if that gets rid of it as well.

hope that helps,
Brandon