[dubrichie]

i've found some good things to experiment with are:

heavy-ish / damped skins on the snare and toms, the remo ones with the black dot underneath the skin are great.

the tuning is important, you want kind of a low and fat, expecially the snare. think "woody" and "soft" as opposed to "crack". listen to the beatles / creedence for the snare sound. i find a deeper snare 6" or 6.5" in depth by 14" is best to go for.

also try cable snares, coated with bronze or something. very old-timey.

putting a wallet on the snare can do wonders too. or tape a pack of smokes to it. you want it tuned to give a fat, woody, thick punch and then deaden it with the wallet / smokes. adjust to taste.

if you have tuned your toms to a good tone but they are too resonant try tying jumpers or such around them with the sleeves, the body hanging down off the bottom of the drum. adjust height and tightness around the drrum to taste. this can also help a lot with them resonating with each other and the snare. if the room is causing a lot of this it is sometimes essential.

get the drums sounding as right as possible in the room and then try to get as good a representation of this as you can with overheads / underheads / fok / room mics; you should be able to to get close to the sound your looking for with these in a more natural way than with multiple close mics. this is how it was done in back in the day. good quality ldc and ribbons are essential for this though. glynn johns is the man for this kind of thing. check out his techniques.

regards,

richie.