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Hello - I am a newbie to the forum. Not to playing music.
I am a drummer and am trying to find the right mics for my style.
I play in a Celtic group. Fiddle, Piano, Drums, and sometimes vocals.
We do lots of instrumentals that consist of arrangements that often change in feel. Some foot stomping reels, and jigs. Dramatic tunes that call for almost an concert percussion sound. Tunes/songs that call for an organic folk/rock drumkit sound.

I play a small jazz/bop kit. A sonor S-Class. 18x16 kick, 10x9 rack 14x14 floor. Ride, splash,crash, and hat. I use brushes, rods, mallets, and sometimes sticks.

The biggest struggle is getting enough mids to lows without sounding way too tinny. We kind of settled on two over head condensers. (Audix adx51)
and a kick, (d-4). The condenser does capture the zings, zangs, chings, tings, and various cymbal work. But when it comes time for some toms that sort of emulate a bodhran it just does not cut it.

Last night I threw one condenser on top, and went with a d-2 on my floor tom. To try and get more depth. While I did get that, it was just so unbalanced sounding.

so here are my two issues, that I need some professional opinions/advice.

I use a lot of cymbal work and want to be able to hear the finite details. As well as get some good dramatic sounds from my toms. The floor tom is even more important at times, as I do pitch bending with my hand. So I am trying to find something or a mic placement that will capture the pitch bending, and the lower tones. But then not be so out of balance with the entire kit when the whole kit is being played normally.

Maybe I am not even making the slightest bit of sense and you think I am crazy. I will just post it and see what happens. :)

It could be that Micing everything would be the answer. But there are several venues that we do not have enough channels so I am usually limited to 3-4.

Thank you for help in advance.

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IIRs Sun, 12/13/2009 - 15:54

mattnb wrote:
Last night I threw one condenser on top, and went with a d-2 on my floor tom. To try and get more depth. While I did get that, it was just so unbalanced sounding.

Unbalanced in what way? The tone of the drum? Or the balance with the rest of the kit?

mattnb wrote: But there are several venues that we do not have enough channels so I am usually limited to 3-4.

Do you have a pair of identical dynamic mics available, ie: a pair of '57s or similar? If so make yourself a reverse y-split cable with two female XLRs paralleled to a single male XLR, and use this to plug two tom mics into a single channel. That way you could squeeze kick, snare, both toms, and a single overhead into just 4 channels. You could even take it further and wire a 3-way XLR combiner for toms and snare to get it down to just 3 channels... but its important to use identical mics if you try this.