| There are four or five parts to this
1. I agree that most drummers are afraid of the sound ..when they hear it they think it lacks focus because of the ratio of direct to ambient room sound.
2. As an E/M/P I have chosen to create huge drums in the spirit of JB but very few project lack the apropriate room in the mix for something so huge. The JB sound takes up a ton of sonic real-estate and arrangements must reflect that. In our world of double-tracked, stero bus compressor slammed , huger and louder mixes the fact is that there is not much room left for massive drums.
3. IMHO the sound has less to do with the size of the bass drum (many classic rock recordings from the 60's and 70' used 20" bass drums) than it does the tuning and striking of the drum. The point being you will hear farily little 32-38hz from the bass drum on the final mix. JB was a master (ask Ocheltree his drum tech) of tuning his kit. Many are suprised to hear how tightly tuned his kit was..becasue he understood projection (yes physics) and how the drum worked in a space.
4. My second to last comment on this is related to many current engineers obsession with micing the literal life out of a kit. I have been hired to mix records that have 8-10-15 mics on the kit..I spend all of my time phase correcting just to get them to sound like status quo crap (I call it slap /thud/ sizzzle) listen to the ramones and early Zep records..there were not many mics on the kits ..ramones sessions often used just 4 mics (a technique that I use quite often becasue it just sounds amazing). On JBs stuff two u47s high above JBs head pointing down at the kit from the back were often a large percentage of the huge sound.
5. I also agree that the room is equally as important as the kit and perfromer. It seems many have not been taught to capture an instrument in space (which makes it unique) instead we put a mic two inches from it then add chessy verb to make it have "space" later..a far cry from real depth and soundstage for sure.
my .02
respectfully,
kb
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