Yamaha Subkick Lo Freq. capture?

[jt916]

Just curious,

has anyone play with this piece of toy yet.

[smoothmoniker]

yup

it works.

-sm

[heinz]

cheaper to make your own
.

[smoothmoniker]

the shell makes a difference.

listen to the kick sound on the new Nelly Furtado record.

-sm

[Robotnik]

Originally posted by smoothmoniker
listen to the kick sound on the new Nelly Furtado record.

Nelly's whiney voice can make any kick drum sound beefier.

[smoothmoniker]

[starts to type rebuttal


...


...


... realizes he agrees]


-sm

[Dan-O]

Originally posted by heinz
cheaper to make your own
.

Man I love the bracket heinz. Where, how, must do and do tell please. I find the current way I do it cumbersome at best.

Dan-O

[heinz]

The bracket was fabricated by a friend of recorderman (member on this board, moderator at recording.org), who hooked me up. You might try pm'ing him over here or over there to see if he can get more. It is a clean and elegant solution.

Wouldn't be too hard to fabricate though... the center hole is threaded for a standard mic stand attachment, and the flange ends are threaded for the NS10 speaker mount hole. I think recorderman has a newer design with swivel technology.

[cdog]

Looks cool - for $300 its hard to go wrong there. I don't have any old NS10s lying around anyway - I'm going to pick one up and check it out.

[smoothmoniker]

i've had good results nudging the audio coming form the subkick forward by about 5 ms or so. Seems to clean up the impact sound a bit.

-sm

[jbuntz]

I made one without the drum shell in about 30 minutes for about $25 and it works fine. I think it was a 6 1/2" ish speaker with a cable soldered on and a mic clip screwed on the edge (not the actual cone) and there's nothing over 400 hz really. I also tried a few guitar cabs but there seemed to be some weird phase issues between the speakers and it picked up sound from all the speakers so it wasn't very ideal.

[Dave Martin]

I'm happy with mine, too.

[Robotnik]

You can use any speaker as a mic. I have 8 that I use from 4" all the way to 16". Bungie cords work better to mount the speakers too.

[Dan-O]

Originally posted by heinz
The bracket was fabricated by a friend of recorderman (member on this board, moderator at recording.org), who hooked me up. You might try pm'ing him over here or over there to see if he can get more. It is a clean and elegant solution.

Wouldn't be too hard to fabricate though... the center hole is threaded for a standard mic stand attachment, and the flange ends are threaded for the NS10 speaker mount hole. I think recorderman has a newer design with swivel technology.

Will do! Most elegant indeed. Swivel mount.............too cool!

[Etnier]

What's going unanswered here is the question of whether, by incorporating a drum shell (resonant enclosure) in their design, Yamaha has gone beyond the speaker-on-a-stick concept in a useful way.

Let's face it: if the equation were turned around, and we were talking about the sound quality of two speakers used as speakers; one driver in free air, and a second, completely different driver, mounted as in the SubKick; no one would be calling the two equivalent.

I'd really like to to hear more here from folks who own them: reactions, reviews, tips, lore.

[mwagener]

Dave Martin was so nice to let us use his SubKick for a comparison with my home made "open-air" speaker contraption.

We used it on a Pearl 24" kick with a 6" hole in the bottom right corner of the front head. The Speaker and the SubKick were placed at the slight upper left side of the front head (not at the same time). In that comparison the two sounded very close. The open speaker had a tad more low-low end around 50Hz (maybe because it didn't have to fight the air inside the shell?). On the SubKick the shell kept the rest of the kit a couple of dBs lower on that track.

We decided to use the speaker, because it blended better with the Shure SM91 mic inside the kick, which was routed through a LittleLabs IBP.

I would say, if you have a speaker sitting around somewhere that could be used in that capacity, don't worry about buying the SubKick. On the other hand the SubKick with it's adjustable stand makes the setup a bit easier and is not a bad deal for the price (looks cooler too)

[drummerman15]

I haven't used a subkik yet, but I would think that the open back designwould allow you to capture more bass since the speaker will be allowed to move a little more freely.

Some hints on the home made jobber: I used a tambourine to mount the speaker. I removed the jingles and screwed the speaker into the frame. The jingle holes make nice places to hook bungee cords for mounting. I also mount a female mic mount on the outside of the tambourine so I can mount it on a mic stand (try using it on floor toms). I've found the bungee cords to be the best mounting possibility for the kick. I got great results when I used 2 kicks and removed the front head of the first kick and suspended the speaker with bungee cords using the tension rods left after removal of the front head. then I put the second kick in front with the beater side head removed and draped a dense blanket over the 2 kicks. I miced the front of the second kick and had to also mic the beater side of the first kick with a condenser. That put the speaker suspended right in the middle of the kick tunnel. After overcoming the phase nightmare, it turned into a great kick sound. I always use the speaker mic in some fashion, even if it doesn't make the mix - I love to have it there.

[blackcatdigi]

This 12" generic replacement woofer fits onto the snare stand nicely.

As per MW, SM91 plus woofer via IBP... Beautiful.

[studjo]

great idea blackcatdigi. Thanks for sharing.


Jo

[Bobalou]

is there an advantage to using the sub kick method over the traditional front of kick mic (using an isolation tunnel), or are these two entirely different approaches to a second kick mic?

[bjornson]

we have the sub kik too but i find that i like to experiment with different size woofers, they all have a slightly different timbre. The subkik is kind of a one trick pony. roll your own too!!

[Drumsound]

I made a totally getto speaker mic. I used an 8" Mojo speaker and mounted it on two 1x1 mounted to a hunk of 1/2"plywood (iI think). I need to re-solder it. It didn't work recently...

It also doubles as my talkback when I'm recording acoustic acts without headphones.