Truthfully, you can use
any matched pair of mics as overheads - condensers, dynamics, ribbons, LD's, SD's...and in different patterns - XY, ORTF, A/B, M-S, Omni, Blumlein, hell, even
mono for that matter...
It all depends on what type of sound you are after, ( tight, open, edgy, warm, silky, and the rest of the Seven Dwarves) along with how your room is (acoustically), and, how well the mics are placed. In that regard, it's always helpful to have an assistant around, someone who can move the mics around at your direction
while you are monitoring. This makes it a lot easier to find the "sweet spot(s)"... those positions that can alter the sound, for better
and for worse - and sometimes drastically so - simply by moving the mic(s) a mere inch or two in any given direction. (
Side note:
When you do come upon a placement that sound good to you, don't forget to check them in mono for potential phase issues).
While a pair of KM85's or 414's, or other nice condensers placed in an XY array are always nice choices, you don't
have to have them in order to get good sounding OH tracks. Just as important is the preamps used, having a well-tuned kit, good mic placement,
and the way the room itself sounds.
I even got decent sounding OH tracks once using a simple pair of 57's, while doing a hired-gun engineering gig at a smaller home studio, and no other matched mics were available...
Maybe they aren't the "standard" go-to's for OH's, but it
can be done, and successfully, if attention is paid to mic placement. The result I achieved with that pair of 57's - while perhaps not as detailed or "silky" as what a pair of good condensers would have offered - still sounded pretty good; and in a way, they were probably the
better choice
in that circumstance because the room we were in ( typical basement) sounded so bad on its own; so the fact that the 57's
weren't as sensitive and "detailed" in their response as nice condensers are, actually
helped in that scenario, because they weren't picking up every little nuance of the room, which in that case, were
bad nuances.
Also, if you
do happen to have a good sounding space, don't rule out using a room mic (Omni or Figure 8) backed off away from the kit, to capture a mono track of
the drums and the room ambience at the same time. This track can be very useful for "tightening" the image, (
or widening it, as the case may be, by decreasing the level and relying more on the OH's) and this is also sometimes beneficial for adding a "live" energy vibe, when used as a support track
in conjunction with stereo arrays. (
I'm not saying to use one or the other ... I'm saying to use both, and then adjust the levels of each in the mix, corresponding to each other as you best hear them.)
Omni pattern mics can be useful for this, as can Ribbon mics ( bi-directional/fig 8). Personally speaking, I like using Ribbons for mono (
and stereo) room ambience - because they aren't as "shrill" or "edgy" in the upper frequency ranges as many condensers can be; as most ribbons top out at around 10-12k, and even then, normally the mic isn't
flat up those frequencies, the upper range is attenuated (shelved), sometimes by as much as -4 db, ( depending on the model), so you can get a nice, warm low end, with hi mids and hi's that are smooth and complimentary - though again, it's all dependent on the room. FWIW, a pair of nice ribbon mics - something like Royer 121's - used as OH's can be really nice too, for the same reason mentioned above - they sound smoother, and you usually don't get as much "brashness" or "splattering" of the cymbals.
IMHO of course...
-d.
