Turning my bass combo amp into a kick drum mic...

[gutsofgold]

I have a Peavey bass combo amp that I have been trying very hard to sell or trade. It seems like this amp doesn't want to leave my practice room. I was looking at it the other day and realized I could probably use it to record a kick drum.

It is a 12" speaker.

My concerns are...
Can I leave the speaker in the cabinet? It has a ported hole in the back.
And...how would I go about wiring this thing?

Thanks

[Florian]

Try to plug the speaker into a DI Box.

From there you go to a mic preamp. You'll need a lot of gain on the pre, cause the voltage you'll get out of the speaker won't be that high.

Just have a try.
If it doesn't work, it's due to the speaker being to fat so it doesn't move itself enough! Hehe.


Cheers Florian

[gutsofgold]

i'll give it a try. one question though...why can't I run it straight into a preamp?

[Ironklad Audio]

first things first, you're going to want to switch the wires on the speaker

i guess you could leave it in the cabinet, but it probably wouldn't work too well

it would make it harder for the force of the kick to move the speaker(which at 12" is pretty large/heavy to begin with)...as the speaker gets pushed in, the air will hit the back of the cab and force the speaker back out...you want the resonance of the drum to move the speaker, not the resonance and reflections of the cabinet

i'm sure there has to be some fairly cheap and effective method of ghetto-rigging an open-backed enclosure for a kick mic, possibly even something that will attach to a mic stand

and the DI thing is a result of the speaker's output being almost non-existent...mics have electronic components and sometimes transformers and all that good shit to help them give out a decent output. the speaker has nothing but a wire, and needs impedance matching(DI) to lower its resistance, the same as a guitar or bass

[dfpratt04]

I don't know that I agree with the need for a DI, I did the exact same thing gutsofgold is talking about doing with an old Peavey bass amp. The only difference is that mine had an 8 inch driver. I left it in the amp cabinet, although I've been meaning to work up some kind of mount onto a mic stand or something or cutting the back of the cabinet out. But as far as the DI, I get a fairly hot level and usually have to pad it.

I took the amp out completely and soldered a stripped end of an XLR to the speaker terminals. SO I have a male end of an XLR coming from the speaker terminals to my mic pre, it sounds pretty good although I think it'd sound better with the back cut out of the cab or mounted where the speaker would be able to move more freely.

[dfpratt04]

BTW, the thing with using a speaker as a mic for a kick, or bass amp or anything, I have found that you really need another mic on there as well to pick up higher frequencies. with just the speaker/mic on a kick I lose a lot of attack, so I've been sticking a Blue Ball into a cut out hole in the front head, pointing at the beater and speaker infront of the head.

[against88]

i rolled my bass player's ampeg 1x15 cab infront of my kick, ran 1/4" cable from the cab to the purple biz and it was amazing. tried going to many other pre's and the biz 1/4" input beat them all. fun times. if you have a biz, try it.

-w