How big should be the hole on the front head

[deve]

How big should be the hole on the front head? I have a regular evans front head with 2"R hole. When I put the mike in I get a boxy sound, otherwise it's a big sounding pearl masters maple custom drum. Would it help to cut a bigger hole?

[joeq]

some folks will tell you no hole. I am not one of 'those'.

I have a 4" hole, the better to fit big fat mics and my hand through it, not because I think a "4 hole sounds better.

before you make your hole bigger try some internal muffling to the drum- either a sound control head or a small blanket or pillow or one of the commercial solutions.

Also try moving the mic to different spots inside the drum. Try pushing it way back towards the beater head.

I like to keep the mic away from dead center in the drum and to keep it away from the spot directly opposite from where the beater hits, otherwise almost any spot could be The Spot.

In addition to a mic inside the kick, try a LD condenser a foot or two in front of the drum (not in front of the hole) The combination of inside and outside mics will give you a lot to work with.

[frans]

If you have a grasp of how a big/midsized/closed port affects the performance of a loudspeaker in a ported enclosure, then you can apply that to the kickdrum. For short, bigger hole <> less fundamentals. Correct me if I'm wrong. How far you put the mic inside is another thing. I prefer to leave the mic outside the hole.

[deve]

Originally Posted by joeq

some folks will tell you no hole. I am not one of 'those'.


I like to keep the mic away from dead center in the drum and to keep it away from the spot directly opposite from where the beater hits, otherwise almost any spot could be The Spot.

So, I should not point the mic to the beater? Even off axis?

[Jarrett]

Personally I almost always have the kick mic off axis of the beater- Even for death metal and things like that where the kick attak is crucial. Reason. The beater contact tends to deliver a single octave transient usually around 3 k (generalixzation all drums are differant) whick kind of sucks because you eq it out and to my ears no matter what I use short of a GML it sounds more like phase shift when I apply the eq than anything else.( And I am not talking cheap plug ins here either I am talking about SSl and Amek consoles , at times api 550s and 560s) So then in that case you have to gut out this spike and then raise your top end around that to get attak out of the drum- Short answr it sounds crappy. So to combat this I start to shift the mics relationship with the attak pad. If I need the beater attak to be ultra prominant I will go inside the drum typically with a 421 Right on the beater but again 45 degree off axis so that that transient blows by and not directly into the diaphram or I will use a beta 91 on a towel or some kind of thin padding inside the kick. I will add to that a mic right on the out side of the resonant head...like a beta 52 which even though the mid range in the mic is severly comprimised, at this point I am looking for solid low end out in front of the drum.
You have to pay attention to the phse relationship of these 2 and your probably going to have to move them around because typically just flipping phase on the out mic isn't going to be a cure all it will get better but ...well pay attention to the phase- use a scope or just print it into the work station and use the graphic to figure out how much either mic needs to move. And just listen to your bottom. Have someone go out into the live room and move them till they sound the best through your monitors. So yeah I shift the axis depending on how much I am trying to tame down the attak- Also...Thinner batter heads tend to give me more of a headache in this regard.

Hope some of that helps

[Jarrett]

******//home.earthlink.net/~prof.sound/index.html

Check this out. There is a great explanation of how small of large to make the port on your kick with explanations of why....

[ArnieInTheSky]

The hole is your speed. The bigger the hole, the quicker the drum. But the trade off is resonance and low end. The bigger the hole, the faster the drum, the less low end and resonance. The smaller (or no hole) the longer the sustain the more resonant and bigger bottom end. If the drum sounds the way you like it with the hole (or no hole) you have now, then don't change it for the mic, change the mic or micing.

jl

[deve]

thanks for the replys. seems like going to invest in some more front heads. One with a bigger hole and one with no hole at all..

[Kadden Heart]

421 off axis towards beater gets me the snap i want, without the harshness of a 57'

most of the holes i see are always towards one side, so then sticking a d112 halfway into the hole faing wherever the hole is pointing,...that gives me some body.
,....an ns10 woofer on an offset hole picks up great body. also.

long story short, i prefer a small hole, placed bottom left or right a little bit.
other than that, just try different mics,

don't be afraid ot stick a 4050 on the ground a foot back, or the 10woofer....
use different mics to get the snap you need, and another for body.

i've always wanted ot an sm-7 towards the beater inside, off axis.....hmm,....

[Goliath|Audio]

If it is in the studio, some people even say taking the head off.

[Kadden Heart]

eek,...
i'm kind of afraid of taking the front head off now. i took it off for a session i did recently, because of bad placement,.... i don't know what i did,.... but the kick drum on that entire project is straight sampled.
so now i'm scared to death of taking it off
:/

[Goliath|Audio]

I usually add some resonance back into the kick anyways so I am not scared of taking the head off just to get some extra pop. Seems to work for me.

[nandoanalog]

No hole.