Kick Drum Speker Mic

[CJ]

old trick, new twist, i put a switch on the back of this speaker mic,

it throws a 10 uf cap in series to de-wolf the bass drum if that is the style you are playing that day,

some guy sold me 2 ea. Stephens Trusonic Inc 80FR  8 inch speakers for 20 bucks, i put one in the vibro champ and this one in a Frankenbox enclosure,

looking on evilbay i see that i got quite a deal for these full range die cast heavy beauties,

yamaha wants 400 bucks for a non tone control 5.5 inch version of this box, DIY's for about 10 bucks if you have wood scraps and glue left over from a previous project,

ok, here is a pic of the speaker mic,



puts out enuff juice to go straight into the tape deck, phone jack for line level insert box, no preamp needed,  25 ohm 3 watt wire wound for volume co9ntrol incase bonham shows up,

 

[CJ]

i tried to mic the kick drum with a heavy eq'ed sm57 what a joke on me,

so i bought a sennheiser E602 and carved a hole in the front skin, then i stuck a 57 inside the drum for for the heck of it, covered it with a towell,

so i can mix the nice sennheiser punch with the sub wolf freqs and throw a little sm57 in there for beater definition, play with the panning to get a big sound, try phase switch to cancel reverb from nearby tom tom's,

some folks say stay away from the proximity effect near the hole, but others seem to like the mic right past the hole a bit, 1/2 inch can make a difference,

the speaker mic puts out a much lower note than the mighty e602, which isd a nice mic, they made it lighter so it does not tip over the boom stand,

 

[fazer]

got an mp3 of the sound?

 

[fazer]

Looks Cool.  I use to hang a speaker out front.  With other mics in and at the head hole.    The caps a good idea.

 

[CJ]

you need a good system to hear this mic,

sony 7506 do a decent job, they are rated to 10 hz,

best preamp for this if you need more voltage is the v76 because it has the biggest input trans of any preamp,

speakers put out a dc pulse when in front of the kick, so you need some poundage if you don't want to clip,

 

[CJ]

ok now we have a variation of this for the snare, see pic>:

 

[okgb]

I think it was NewYorkDave who had the idea of just taking a combo amp  [ like perhaps a champ ]
and putting it up against the kick , then taking the speaker itself into a d.i.  [ some people use NS10 's ? ]
works o.k. for that sound

 

[CJ]

i tried it thru the pro co DI and the country hick, but with that low a frequency, you want to avoid transformers unless they are way beef,

anybody ever try a speaker mic ona  bass cab?

 

[okgb]

I used the combo amps on Kik [ not lately  ] into a passive D.I.  . I did find I'd often need to use the pad

 

[kevinkace]

I've been wanting to try this for a while (bought a sub/enclosure for cheap second hand). I was actually wondering about the possibility of using +48v to create an active circuit for a balanced output.

 

[CJ]

yes you ncould buffer the thing with solid state, or just use a mic cord patched into an LA2a and use it for more gain, but the compressor part, well, there are better compressors for bass drum than the LA2a, so just turn the peak reduction off and turn up the gain,

 

[tv]

anybody ever try a speaker mic ona  bass cab?

It works, but not for all bass-lines.
It could be interesting if you have an amped synth-bass line.

 

[CJ]

ok we scaled the speaker down to a 4 inch wolfer and added a 24 volt transformer in reverse to get rid of hum ands it worked, still have plenty of bass despite the xfmr,

the hum was not that bad with the guitr cord patch, but now it is studio quiet.

this will also keep a dc spike from killing something, ...i think...

 

[mata_haze]

ok now we have a variation of this for the snare, see pic>:

sorry if it might sound silly: is this a technique used to record snare drums?!

Mattia.

 

[desol]

Pretty sure it's a joke.  ;D

But you know...it might not be that bad for somethin...

 

[njm]

Can't the output of a speaker be wired balanced though? It's a floating coil of wire, just like a transformer.

I've seen loads of NS10 drivers used as kick mics, and even though they've used a balanced xlr people always tie pins 1 and 3 together and wire the speaker unbalanced. I've never understood why!?

 

[Winetree]

Latta work, I've just used a transformer direct box.
Plug the unbalanced speaker in, get isolated balanced out.

 

[CJ]

you can have either/or xlr or 1/4 inch, ground the xlr shield pin 1 at the mic pre, 2 and 3 float in from the xfmr, hopefully rejecting cmmr,
1/4 inch will go into a hot mixer line in/insert for enuff gain, or the country hick is what i use into an api into the tape,  you want to hit tape hard with bass as the vu meter will lie as to what you get out,

the xlr can go into a mic pre if you find the right one, i did not have good luck going into the mic pre without the direct in box, they do not like the big spike, so level setting is tough as the drummer can determine signal strength,

maybe the country hick has clamping diodes which keeps the kick from over-driving the mic pre, i have not looked in there for a while,

or maybe the nickel core mic input transformers get saturated with the spike,

using utc A-39, 2 K to 600 as DI output,

 

[usekgb]

I've wondered if there are any transformers out there that will take the nominal 8ohm output of a speaker, and convert it to 200 ohms for this application.  An impedance correction network may be required to compensate for the rising impedance of the speaker at low frequencies.  Any ideas CJ?

 

[CJ]

let me get the turns for a 8:200,

what is the inductance of a speaker?

do we want an 8 ohm pri for best pwr match, or do we want a 5 times the 8 ohms so we do not load the speaker down?

we could try 500 turns on a twice stack of 312 EI for a total of 4 henries for the 200 ohm winding,

turns ratio is root 25, which is the Z ratio 200/8

so 100 turns for the speaker winding for 160 mH induxshen,

ho man, a 120 to 24 volt xfmr has a turns of 5:1, henries are about right, just use a 120 to 24 volt at 200 ma, should be a perfect fit, load the sec with 500 ohm resistor to get some current flowing which will provide back emf to the speaker, damping,

bh curve will be weird, non linear, offset from the H axis due to DC on the rise, then spider will damp speaker on rebound for a different curve on the way down, need a storage scope,




hey, i bet a Geo-transformer from triad would be the ticket, especially designed to pick up ultra low freq seismic waves, super low z on one side, probably 200 ohms on the high side let me check the catalog,