Speaker as a kick drum mic

[Marcus B]

I notice from the pics of mic'd up kits thread the old speaker as a microphone trick is used more often than I would have thought. I personally haven't tried it yet myself but am interested in people's thoughts and experiences on *ahem* speaker choice

We labour for hours over the correct choice of microphone, so was wondering if those of you who frequently use a speaker as a microphone on the kick drum had spent any time trying different speakers and what kind of characteristics they exhibited? Does size matter ? I know traditionally (in that urban legend kinda way) that the NS10 drivers were allegedly the 'mic of choice'.

Cheers,
Marcus

[entropy]

Marcus

Not to fob you off with some lame arse, stock answer, but do a search. There has been a couple of really good threads on this topic with photos to boot.

[superburtm]

I tried the sub kick..guess it's OK if you don't have a good LDC.

[Exsanguis]

When I use a speaker as a kick mic, it's an NS10 woofer for me, just because that's what I had lying around when I first made it. I guess that stronger and more durable speakers would be better in the long run, but I've had great results with mine.

[tmcconnell]

I've tried a couple. My best effort was a junk 6.5" hi fi speaker withthe foam surround almost disintigrated. This allowed the most amount of current to be generated from the least amount of air pressure.

I fed it into a scrap preamp that has good headroom (MP20). The sound was great. I needed another mic to get the high end, but the lows were fab.

[absrec]

I've gotten great results with the NS-10 cone in conjuction with a mic inside (D112,RE20,SM7a, not nessecarily in order of preferance BTW). Then one day I heard about people taking it a step further and running it though a countryman type 85 DI as the speaker is unbalanced. So I thought, what if a ran it through my Avalon U5 DI and dicked with the tone settings? It sounded great on either tone 1 or 2. 2 being the "huge" low end setting that I usually go for. It also helps to give it a couple db of compression. It's more bottom end than you'll ever use, so print it seperately.

That being said, I think if you are going for a tighter sound, a 414, U87, 4033 or similar mic can achieve great results. The speaker tends to give you some pretty bodacious sustain.

[jbuntz]

One time I tried putting a speaker and D112 right by each other to keep them time aligned and I guess the big magnet cause a lot of flux to be transferred between the two different transducers so that the D112 had lots of bottom and the speaker had some top. It actually made them both sort of unusable.

[63 Jaguar]

It's not for use instead of an LDC. It's a different flavor.

High freq rejection is fantastic. No worry about cymbal bleed and blanket tunnels.
I use a Senn 602 inside the kick.

I use an old Advent 8" (still in the speaker housing) that was laying about. Sounds fantastic.

I also use it further back in the room when tracking a band to get some live stage oomph.

Use whatever is laying around.

Thaddeus Corea
Jaguar Recording Studio

[84K]

The Yamaha Sub Kick with a D12e is awesome...

[Exsanguis]

My ideal kick drum micing setup consists of usually 3 mics: a "normal" kick mic inside the drum, like a D112, D6, MD421, etc., the speaker right up on the kick, then an LDC a few feet back from it, in a tunnel. Works great. The best LDC I've ever used on kick in this setup was a U47, but it has worked really well other times with a 414, U87, or TLM103. Sometimes I'll keep each of these mics on separate tracks, but other times I'll mix them all together before hitting tape(or DAW), eqing each one to taste.

[superburtm]

I agree that the bonus of the subkick is the HF rejection (cymbals and such)..but that's also why it's not a solid replacement of a good LDC..but it is a cool companion.

[Full Clip Audio]

I use an old 20/20 that I removed form its housing and find that it gives such a beautiful and clean low end that I can shape and notch it into whatever I need. It is just a beautiful pillowy and smooth chunk to cut up and give the kicks whatever I need.