[abtech]

Doing live sound for several years, I began to realize that bringing my mic locker on the road had it's caveats. After a few of my mics were essentially destroyed by "enthusiastic" drummers, I started a basic drill.

While setting up the mics for the kit, I would ask (totally seriously) if the drummer felt that he might hit one of the mics. If the answer was anything but an emphatic "NO WAY!", I would start placing my "especial" mics on the kit.

This group of mics consisted of about 8 "slightly used" SM58s that had been through several punk and new wave shows and all had "asymmetrical" heads and bodies (gross understatement). After mumbling something like "too bad the drums will sound like crap with these mics", the drummer would usually start offering comments like "I'll be careful, just let me use the good mics" or something to that effect.

After 4 years of using this procedure, I never had a mic that was damaged from being hit by the drummer. I explained that I wasn't putting $15K+ worth of mics up there without a credit card swipe and that either resolved the situation or they used the 58s.