I want your opinion on this drum setup. No wrong answers here!

[erock]

This is going to be long.

My band is going to start tracking for our first full length in about two weeks, so I need to begin preparing for the drum chain. Here's what's going on:

Drums will be tracked in a huge basement with about 30' ceilings, concrete floors and drywall walls. The kit will be a DW kit with a 26" kick, 12" and 16" toms, a Gretch Catalina maple snare, 15" Zildjian K hats, 21" K Custom dry ride and various crashes. We will probably change a few things up depending on the song, we have an old Ludwig snare (the industry standard one, cant remember the name) as well as a whole lot more cymbals. There will be new heads on all the drums and tuned properly. And the drummer is a great drummer who actually knows how to play a kit so I'm not worried about that.

My recording setup is PTLE 7 w/002, M-Audio Octane, UA 2-610 tracking @ 48KHz

The mic setup will probably be like this:
kick in: Audix d6 > 002
kick out: Shure pg52 > 002
snare top: Shure sm57 > UA 2-610
snare bottom: Shure pg56 > 002
hi tom: 57 > Octane
low tom: 57 > Octane
overheads: either Shure pg81s or Shure KSM27s depending on if I can get another KSM27 from a friend > Octane
hats: MXL 991 or Shure pg81 > Octane
ride: MXL 990 or Shure pg81 > Octane
room: BLUE Baby Bottle and Shure KSM27 if I only end up with one > UA 2-610

I know, I know, you are going to tell me that I don't need ALL those mics. But my drummer is very dynamic and I don't want there to be a passage in a song where he's playing the hats and I can't hear them because the OH's don't pick them up enough. So if the time comes where I don't need all the mics, all I have to do is mute/delete them. I'd rather be safe than sorry. I also know that there will be phase problems, so I will be manually lining them all up when it comes time for editing. I will probably be running the OH's through the UA 2-610 during mixing for some tube warmth and some natural compression if I crank it.

These aren't the best mics in the world, but they're all I have to work with.
Do any of you have any tips/suggestions/corrections/criticism you can give me? I've been recording for 4 years and have about 15 projects under my belt (I don't work that often), but this project is by far the most important I've done so far.

To give you a slight reference of my drum sounds, here's a song from a band I just finished, except this was recorded in a small, narrow room with 8' ceilings and carpet. Listen to "Velvet Thunder" www.myspace.com/fixedtiltuesday

Any help would be appreciated. Even if you say, "this setup blows so hard," it will still be appreciated.

PS we are a pop-rock band on steroids basically (www.myspace.com/eastendlightsmusic). We want a good mix of definition and ambience to the record. I'll post some references to the drum sounds we're looking for if I can think of any.

[chrisso]

Everything looks basically fine.
The biggest hurdle to getting a great drum sound though is going to be that concrete floor.
Build a wood and carpet drum riser.
Get as much soft surface material into that space as possible. Old carpets, sofas etc...

I love a big ambient drum sound, but concrete and drywall are very harsh sounding IMO. So my opinion is, try and dial out as much of the concrete as you can.

[flail19]

Originally Posted by erock

Drums will be tracked in a huge basement with about 30' ceilings, concrete floors and drywall walls. The kit will be a DW kit with a 26" kick, 12" and 16" toms, a Gretch Catalina maple snare, 15" Zildjian K hats, 21" K Custom dry ride and various crashes.

Are you going for a huge huge drum sound? With those big drums and big room you will get it.

we have an old Ludwig snare (the industry standard one, cant remember the name)

Black beauty?....Lovely...thumbsup

I know, I know, you are going to tell me that I don't need ALL those mics.

No I won't tell you squat about how many mics to use. I don't use that many but you do and that's all that counts.
Do any of you have any tips/suggestions/corrections/criticism you can give me?

I would only worry about bleed with that loud of a room so really pay attention to each mic. As long as you take you're time you will be fine.

Good luck and have fun!

[brendondp]

Originally Posted by erock

This is going to be long.

My band is going to start tracking for our first full length in about two weeks, so I need to begin preparing for the drum chain. Here's what's going on:

Drums will be tracked in a huge basement with about 30' ceilings, concrete floors and drywall walls.

I also know that there will be phase problems, so I will be manually lining them all up when it comes time for editing. .

Sorry to edit your post down, but I thought I'd do that to highlight your biggest hurdles:

The room.

Phase cancellation.

I think your gear is more than agequate to get the type of sound you're going for, and you've helped yourself out with a kit that will (probably) tune up well and project nicely.

However, I'd really recommend you spend a lot of time on placement of both the kit in the room and the mics in proximity to the kit.

Find a spot where the kit works - and by that I mean where you have the least amount of comb-filtering going on which will suck the tone out of your close mics. You'll just have to experiment until you find the spot where the kit sounds the best - walking around the room with the snare, playing as you go, is often the best way of sussing this out.

If possible, I agree with chrisso - build a riser and get the kit off the floor. If it's not possible, try some carpet or plywood. Try something. Then tune the kit to the room.

Then, start setting up mics. As you mention, you'll do yourself a massive favour by checking for phase relationships every step of the way. Dry wall is pretty merciless in creating all sorts of unflattering reflections, and you really don't want your close mics picking them up. If you have access to some moveable gobos you may want to set those up around the kit to retain the "tightness" of the close mics, while allowing a degree of room sound from your overheads and room mic.

Really though, it's all in the details. If you've got the time to spend on it then take it to get the best sound you can.

There's no plug-in (or software based solution) that rivals a kit tuned to the room, positioned correctly and miked with phase coherence.

Good luck!

bdp

P.S. Post some sounds when you're done!

[Jules]

Borow extra snares (like 3 or 4) and cymbals (you need drummer friends!) - and select from them per song on a musical basis, some ride cymbals will suit some songs better - others wont - same with snare drums.

[FossilTooth]

Are you playing in the band?

If the answer is yes, the most useful of advice I can give you is to hire a capable and friendly freelance engineer to come in and help with the project. You won't regret it.


If the answer is no, my biggest piece of advice will be a little redundant: Do whatever you can to make the room sound better. I like live, reflective and unusual rooms just fine...... as long as they sound good!

Too much concrete is the fastest way to get stuck with a truly trashy drum sound.

The only other advice I can offer is that a pg52 is a very unusual choice for an 'outside kick' mic. It can be surprisingly nice as an inside kick mic, and I've chosen it a handful of times when there were more expensive options on hand.

Still.... I'm skeptical that it will deliver a satisfying outside kick sound. But who knows? I've never tried it in that considering your room it just might work! Let me know how it turns out.

+1 on Jules' comment about bringing alternate snares and metal.

[erock]

Awesome, thanks for the suggestions. My drummer and I have about 3/4 snares between us and about 12 cymbals between us, so we will definitely consider our options for the song.

And yes I am in the band, but I am also a freelance engineer and have been so for 4 years. Production and engineering are what I want to do with my life so I want to be able to be 100% apart of it.

I might try switching the mics around on the kick. Putting the PG inside and putting the D6 right outside the hole.

And yeah I was definitely going to find the best spot in the room by walking around with a snare. I do that already by clapping as I walk around whenever I go over there.

As for drywall, I might can be able to do something. Maybe at least put some plywood on the walls, even though i would just have to lay them on the wall and probably couldnt go up any higher than the sheet of wood. If I can get my hands on a gobo type thing i would use it. And I think I can pull off making a riser. I thought about that right after I made the post.

This helps a lot, keep them coming.

[grischteen]

Originally Posted by erock

And yes I am in the band, but I am also a freelance engineer and have been so for 4 years. Production and engineering are what I want to do with my life so I want to be able to be 100% apart of it.

I've been in the exact same situation two times. The first time I recorded and mixed my world music band - no problems at all. Everything was cool and we just got ourselves a record deal 3 weeks ago with that album

Second time I recorded my folk/rock band and it was hell! It took 1½ year and the band members didn't care shit about the time I used as an engineer or the fact that I had mixed the whole album for nothing because afterwards they found out that they wanted a totally different sound than mine

If you want to be the engineer for your own band, make sure the rest of the band totally agree! I'm not saying that it can't be done, but I will newer do it again for sure.

Best regards,
Asger

[Mondo]

for what its worth, i thought the drum sound on the link you posted sounded perfect for that type of music.

[erock]

Thanks for the comments! That old Ludwig snare I have is actually an Acrolite. I see that they're not going for much on ebay and seem to be pretty common, but as far as I can remember its still a good sounding snare, no?

[drumvan]

absolutely nothing wrong with a well tuned, properly played acrolite. they are basically an 8 lug version of the venerable supraphonic. same size, same shell construction (aluminum), no chrome plating to flake off and different lug design. play it well!

[erock]

sweet. i just put a Remo Emperor X dot on top and a Diplomat on bottom and got a Soundpure Blaster snare to put on it. I have to get ropes to attach the snare though so i can't play it yet =/ but I'm excited to see how it sounds.

tracking starts in about a week and we're going to mix it up between 3 different kits. I think we're just going to use what's best for each song, mix up different drums to get the best sounds. we'll see how it goes. let me know if anyone has anymore input.

[Animal2612]

I know this thread is long gone, but loose all of the pg mics. They really r garbage.