prog drumsetups and mikes

In the coming months I will be working on a compilation album with 12 prog(metal)bands.
The last few kits, I got in my studio, from bands that will be participating had 7-9 aprox toms and loads of cymbals.
Given the double kick and even sometimes double snare, needless to say that you can get short on the right mike for the job....
but worse, often you have to pick a less suited mike for some elements as there's no fysical room to place another 421.
In the early 90's I used those AKG "mini D112 lookalikes", C40*? These are condensermikes and didn't sound bad when right of the box. Unfortunately your average mr Drummer hits them a few times per session and they die or start sounding bad real quick. Shure has some clipons (beta98D/S?), are these any 'stronger'? I really will need some small clipons for at least 75% of this project. We're talking usually 20-24 tracks drums only, and all has to be closemiked preferably.
So I will be shopping soon, any hints for little gems are welcome :wink:

Audio Technica ATM 25's Small and compact but sound great for toms and kick drums.

Shure Beta 56's another good drum mic. For toms and snares it's also compact

I use several of these on my kit, now discontinued but
they can still be sourced,nice on toms,even good on snare
AKG C418
http://www.akg.com/site/products/powerslave,id,275,nodeid,2,_language,EN.html

I have Sennheiser 604's what can do, but am looking at solutions what require less space and preferable condensers

Beyerdynamic Opus 87 any good?

looking at the price, the Beyers are pretty good. Not the cleanest sounding mike but you don´t want that for prog. They should fit your needs well. I always choose them before the e604s.
The Shure Beta98 has a very narrow band presence boost which sometimes can sound unnatural. And it´s a bit noisy. It has a huge proximity effect. If it´s very close-miked you get a fat signal

Maybe before getting too crazy you could try a [matched pair] mic about a foot or two out from each bass drum facing roughly into the floor and a bottom snare mic on a separate track.

Reeeealy depends on the drummer and the room.

I use matched pairs in smaller setups like jazz and less technical sounding genres.
On projects in the metal genres, you really need to mike everything, albeit it to soundreplace most of it afterwards...
It is also very important for the drummers involved to see you mike it all (even if you would not recorded all those mikes :wink: )

If you want to lower your track count on the drum kit try making a Y cable with your tom mics. Top and bottom mic out, invert polarity of one in the cable to a single XLR.

I made a few of these Ys and love them!

oops double post!

what happens with mikes on Y cables when one gets sound (kickdrum) and the other not? I would think that the 2nd one will behave like a speaker?

Not sure I understand yer question.

But the idea is to reduce track count by using one pre for two mics. In the typical scenario you would mic top and bottom and throw one out of phase be it the top or bottom depending on how the phase reversal affects other mics in the mix. Regardless of the y cable you still have the bottom mic'd and usually its the one you invert. It would still pickup the kick without the Y cable. and that kick would still get inverted. I like the y because it does this for you. The bottom mic will be out of phase from top because the wiring is out of phase. This means that top mic XLR out is connected properly, gound to ground, hot to hot, cold to cold. the bottom is wired with hot to cold, cold to hot. and both flow to a single XLR head.

Of course you'll spend some more time tweakin your toms to get the two sounding perfect to tape. If you don't then your stuck with what you get. If you do use this trick be careful and dilligent but I swear you'll love it. BTW, toms are the only place I would use my Y's. I love toms and find that I work them harder when using y cables.

A buddy of mine has a bunch of those AKG 418s posted above and he swears by them for toms. I have a few of these CAD mics, they're dynamic with a pretty cool response for toms. I usually use my sennheisers but for the buck these are pretty cool. http://www.cadmics.com/TSM411.htm

[quote author="tony dB"]what happens with mikes on Y cables when one gets sound (kickdrum) and the other not? I would think that the 2nd one will behave like a speaker?[/quote]

draw the electric circuit
One mike is the generator with the series resistance of 150 Ohm. This mike works into the paralleled resistances of the second mike and the preamp. You will have at least 6dB less level at the preamp input because this circuit forms a loaded voltage divider (even worse its more a close to shorted VD). The source mike sees less resistance than its own output impedance which means source voltage goes down. The mikepreamp gets less power because most current flows through the second mike because of its lower resistance (app 10x less)

Yeah, I never put it into a diagram like that. Thanks for noting that. I starting using the y's because I really do get a cooler sound compared to when I would use two pres(like i said I tend to work the mic and tuning more when I use the Y's.) How much of a negative impact does your diagram offer circuit wise. Ten times sounds like alot but the tom sounds I get are huge. Does this end up increasing your noise floor 10 times. Maybe this isnt a cool trick!

I quess I could accomplish the same goal with a buss I usually use outboards and would hate to put it through my console just to buss it out.

my question is not about crosstalk...
Imagine you put a D112 on Y connected to another mirophone.
Then only one is placed in front of a kickdrum, the 2nd is somewhere a few meter away. Will the energy picked up by the first D112 transfer into the 2nd when nothing is connected to a preamp?

The reason I started thinking about this is when you open a gtr cabinet, 4 x 12", without it being connected to an amp, and you push the cone of 1 speaker, the other speaker move along electrically (nothing to do with air comression), so the comparison is obvious not? Once connected to other gear this will change of course. I wanted to ask to find out if the Y needs to be connected to the preamp first to avoid damage in case 2 different mikes get used.

about 2 mikes on toms... I tried this a few years ago and dicovered that if you put 2 mikes on the topskin, you get quit similar results. It is more or less comparable with putting 2 mikes together on the same gtr-ampspeaker. I did switch the bottom phase when comparing with top and bottom setup.

given the overkill of (roto & octo) toms I will be facing, those AKG C418's are the ones to tryout. The Shure is tempting too, but a little expensive as I would need 5. The Beyer Opus 87 and 88 remain serious candidates as well. Will try to get them on demo and findout. Thanks for the feedback!

I have E604's too, but the clips of those are a bit too big to allow closer miking, especially on smaller toms. They always end up on separate stands, what is not practical in crowded kits.

Hmm. I dont really know but it seems plausible. And of course you can make a speaker a mic by inverting the+- inputs The reason I got into using the Y was because it was recommended to me by a friend who is a formiddable producer. He has done some huge stuff and wont record a tom without a y. Once I tried them I really did get better sounds with 3 less tracks on the count. Im not sure if electrically its bass ackwards but it works. Jensenman sure knows his shit tho. I think Ill continue to use them unless JM chimes in and says its a good way to kill a pre.

Good luck with those sessions. Those 418 are supposed to be pretty cool. Wish I had a handful too.

[quote author="W DeMarco"]making a Y cable with your tom mics.[/quote]
There's then always the option for mics in series as well. Maybe it sounds bad, but at least from a technical point of view it'll be a bit less unhealthy than the Y-method.

Think gtr-PUs, all kinds of series/parallel/summing-combinations... there'll at least be a few that make sense for mics too... at least I was pretty impressed with those cheap Danelectro gtrs they put out last year, the center-position does put the lipsticks in series i.s.o. the usual parallel and over there it works... hence the idea to fire the series-connection at this mic-thread.

Regards,

Peter

Can you elaborate on how to set up the mics in series? Sounds like a tasty option! How could you invert polarity in this option. Same as the Y?

[quote author="W DeMarco"]Can you elaborate on how to set up the mics in series? Sounds like a tasty option! How could you invert polarity in this option. Same as the Y?[/quote]

In series AND polarity inversion for an 'S-cableTM' would go like this:

* as for the Y-cable, use (1) XLR-M and (2) XLR-F plugs and preferrably two identical mics

* connect the '+' (pin 2) of your XLR (that goes to your mic-pre) to the '+' of say the top-mic,

* then connect '-' of top-mic to '-' of btm-mic,

* and connect to '+' of btm-mic to the '-' (pin 3) of your XLR (that goes to your mic-pre)

* connect all gnds together


Just an idea, may sound crap, but it won't take you more than a few minutes of soldering.

Regards,

Peter