Help recording kickdrum....

[Me on crack]

Me & my band record our own stuff but we can never get a good decent studio drumkick sound, we want a good dry and punchy sound with nice lows without sounding muddy, maybe some bright on it.

Got to say the drumkick sounds acoustically perfect.

Currently we mix a Shure BETA-52 inside the drumkick and a Sennheiser e825-S in front the head next to the pedal, thats the closest I get to the sound I'm talking about but not happy with it.

Any ideas?
:(

[Moo]

Gate it and EQ it. Just the beta in the hole should do. A lot of the really iconic drum sounds you hear are due to signal processing, not mic placement.

[mingus]

i would also use some muffles and such on the drum, experiment with it to get closer to the sound you envision. I had alot of luck with a sm50 through a hole in the bass drum head, the drum was slightly muffled. Then i built a housing of pillows and blankets around the front of the drum. then i eq'd it a bit untill the sound was where i wanted it. Just mess around, there are plenty of clever techniques t capture cool sounds.

[Me on crack]

Originally posted by Moo
Gate it and EQ it. Just the beta in the hole should do. A lot of the really iconic drum sounds you hear are due to signal processing, not mic placement.


got any recomendation on EQ?

[Moo]

80-100hz +2db
400-600hz -3db
2.5-5 kHz +1db

[grover]

Might sound weird, but a friend of mine takes egg crate-like mattress comforter foam, rolls it so it fits inside the bass drum, and then positions the mic about half-way inside the foam. The foam juts out several feet from the actual drum, but it did sound cool. We also have used triggers on the bass drum hooked up to a drum machine, and blended the triggered sound with the actual drum... So you get two tracks for the bass drum recorded at once, and then level the two to your taste.