yes material affects sounds. thats why drums are built out of all different types of woods, wood, not pvc. so your looking for a more pro sound try the two mics and a blanket trick. sounds like kinda what you're lookin for. put one mic near the contact point and one mic about a foot off(you'll have to adjust to get the one thats a foot off, i'm sure our mics and rooms differ). I use a d6 in the drum and a baby bottle a foot out of the hole with a blanket covering it. I like the sound for some drummers but honestly I get the sound i really want with my d6 alone.

I've had good results not even using a second kick drum. Try cardboard, heavy packing blankets, etc.

i like to take a piano bench and shove it right next to the head longways (not touching) then set up one mic close and a condesnor a couple feet back, then move the mics around, and then drape with a blanket..... The sound doesnt change too much whether you have the blanket or not, but it helps keep the kick out of the other mics.... and it keeps other sounds from getting into the condensor....

K

man, some friends of mine were recording and i was helping out, and got the best kick sound i've ever heard 2 weeks ago. my friend works for a guy who has a lot of really nice equipment, we used a beyerdynamic m88 in the sound hole and a Neumann FET 47 about 8" in front of the kick.

i was like, dude, what about the bleed, we need a blanket, and the old time engineer that was helping us setup the drum mics told us "let it bleed". i was kinda dumbfounded, and as silly as it seems i was like, hmm, ok.

we were using a rack of neve 31102s and apogee converters into a digi002.

i know what your probably thinking now, your like yeah of course you're gonna get a great sound with a $3000 mic and great pre's etc, but i took notice to what the 47 was actually adding to the mix.

the 47 gets this really low dark thump. it sounds like crap by itself. im not kidding. it sounded like garbage when we a/b'd it with the m88. The m88 was actually adding most of the tone to the kick, the 47 gave it this really nice flat thump.

so to make this long post longer, the moral of the story is that someone who used to be really into getting the "it" sound by doing the drum tunnel is now converted into using well tuned kick with 2 mics. I am going to buy a m88 asap and use the ns10 kick drum technique to get the thump, and as soon as i have 3k laying around, im gonna get a FET 47 (not likely real soon).

when we did the bass, we tried a u87, a FET 47 and DI. and the sound of the kick with the 3 bass inputs mixed together made this unimagineably big sound. the kind of sound the makes you feel like your nuts just dropped.

and for the record, we didn't have a nice tuned studio we were recording in. we were in a standard office building that we put up a bunch of blankets and cases and crap in to dampen the sound. took this really rediculous sounding room and made it passable.

the way the recording turned out really made me realize, it's not the room, it's the gear and the hands (ears) running it.

i know this contradicts all you guys who talk about how it's the room not the gear, but i'm not kidding, with nice gear, you can make a poor room sound amazing. after all, it's only rock and roll. nobody wants it to be perfect. you need some grit in rock recordings.

steve

You should stick an AT 4047 in there in the case that you don't keep a U47 fet around...same kind of sound if you position it right. Probably not as good as a U47 fet in good condition, but it's pretty dang good.