Mic'n 16 in. kick

[Paulw33]

Hi forum

I have a 16 in floor tom (Ludwig John Bonham) That has been converted into a kick with a pearl jg16.I use coated evans on the batter and a
clear resonant witha 4 in sound who. I use a small piece of foam to mute
the resonant head.Im looking for suggestions on how to mic , cut down on bleed , and find a nice warm sound.not extremely boomy but resonant and warm.Thanks for any advise

Paul
lowercaseblues.com

[BrendanDwyer]

If you own a bass drum mic of decent quality (shure or AT or the like) then it shouldn't be that difficult. As far as bleed, are we talking bass drum bleed into surrounding mics or other drums bleeding into the bass drum mic. either way, you can roll off the bass freq. in your cymbal, snare, overhead mics, or roll off the hi's on your bass drum mic to minimize.

ORRRR you can do what i do and go for bleed! Some of the best recordings of drum sets ever (bonham in particular) were done in such a way as to maxamize bleed and use it! Some of the biggest, warmest kit sounds i've ever gotten were with one mic in the middle of the room.

However, if you definately want an isolated kick drum sound, try this: Position the mic in the drum facing the beater head, but aim it off axis. somwhere other than where the beater makes contact. don't get too close to the head, closer=attack farther=resonance. Try using a little bit of compression on it to smooth out the dynamics of the drum, and it will give it some punch.

If you are experimental in nature, place an omni directional mic 15-20' away from the kit, and proceed to mic the kit as normal. my standard operation for a big kit sound is: bass drum mic as described above, overhead condensor mic about five feet above the kit over and between the rack and floor tom, snare drum mic (traditional placement) and the omni. I only have to mix four tracks and the sound is enormous. get rid of the omni and add some tom mics for a tight close mic'd sound, but get ready to mix!