Percussion Foundation

[Lazymits]

Hi everybody,
Need some advice on gear and something told me this was the place...slutz
As the title sugests I am starting a percussion foundation with a small 'studio' .
Our gear at the moment is:

ISA 428 Prepak
002R
Dyns BM6A
AT4050
AT4051 (pair)
AT2500
SENH- 604 (4) 602
SM57 (5)
AKG 418 (3)
AKG C1000

Our main goal is recording DRUMS and Percussion in all its variations ( african, american, asian,mideast eu u name it) and ocassional vox and acoustic instruments.
Hard disk and mix 'in the box'. Waves, Bombfactory,Nomad
Our control room is around 20 m2, and we have a small live area (15 m2 )for vocals,etc. both treated.
Two bigger areas of 90 m2 are patched with the control.We use these for drums , Taiko, Dundums and all the big ,moving air instruments The areas are not treated but will be at some point...sigh

Nuff said; now I have a 2.000 € budget and need more pres and mics :

-Have been offered a brand new SPL Goldmike mod 9844 for 700€
- AEA R84 ribbon 1.100€ (mercenary price, with ship to eu and tax is around the same i think as dollars)
-RNC 190€

Are these good choices? , or should I buy a
MP-2NV or similar, that leaves me with no more choices
What's the meaning of life? 42?
Thanks for your interest.

[TeReKeTe]

in a rush so will write more later--

I'm a percussionist. You've already got a great foundation for electronics. The 4050 in conjunction w/ the focusrite box should be able to handle tons of will come your way. if you're building stuff up w/ overdubs, play around w/ mic proximity and the polarity patterns on the 4050. shakers/tambs/etc work great in omni if the room sounds good. check out some ribbon mics, too... the royers are insane on all things percussion.

that said-- you may want to invest in more modular room treatments-- from well-built gobos to just some packing blankets-- in order to create the "right" environment for a multitude of instruments. afterall, taiko drums and african xylophone fill up the room wildly differently.

[Ted Nightshade]

I do a lot of percussion too. I have found that the converters are the hardest part. Transients get short shrift from most of the converters out there. But I'd think long and hard about putting that $2000 towards converters that can really do justice to percussion transients (maybe Lavry? Never heard 'em but worth a stab... I know it's not HEDD or Genex or RME... SLAM! has done it for me but breaks the budget).

[Lazymits]

Hola Terekete,
You are right, we have decent quality gear, but there is never such thing as 'enough gear' .This I learned here
The 4050 is a great all rounder for sure . Great performances have been recorded with the ISA-4050.
The good thing is we have very good musicians at the foundation, and that's the most important part,right?
Next should be the rooms as u pointed out, and that is another part of our budget.
We built some panels based on some of the great advice found here (Nathan etc..) and that is helping a lot till we can make the rooms sound better.
The ribbon mic is a 'must' and either the Royer 121 or R84 should be in our locker. I've searched a bit and both seem to be good choices. Unfortunately I cannot AB them so any advice is very welcome.
I would like a couple extra pres to complement the four ISA when drum recording. Goldmike? RNP + RNC? If all my dilemas were like this...
Keep it coming please

[Lazymits]

Yep, converters .That's a big part in this binary game. For the moment I cater the ADC with the ISA lightpiped...but the DAC I will have to look at.Here we go, another one to the list...

[TeReKeTe]

I dig the RNC whole lot for tracking; it catches transients fast enough, and doesn't cost as much as the 1176 or distressor I wish was lying above/below it in the rack... not a chance that you can go wrong. no experience w/ the RNP though.

as far as pre's go, for colored stuff i really dig the JoeMeek VC series. certainly not the go-to pre but it's worked wonders on tabla, and they leave you w/ another compression voice to work w/. talk about dirt cheap; they're all between $100-$150 on ebay. it also overloads pretty nicely; works well as the "****-up" box for snare mic #2.

for low-end stuff, the oktava ribbon is hip, albeit weird; I've had pretty awesome results using it as a distance mic on some big drum overdubs. obviously a completely different animal from the royers, etc, butif you go the great river route, it'd have insane bottom end. again, only like $250 or so.

i've also liked the 610 on stuff, esp. snare; not enough to go out and get it, but it's certainly got a voice.

in my head, you've already got a great "transparent" chain w/ the AT mic's and the ISA.

what are you guys using the dynamic mic's on? have you thought about getting something like a 52/D112/D6? what kind of conjunction micing are you doing (dynam +condenser)?

as far as converters go, I really dig my metric halo box; about 3/4 of the way between motu and apogee stuff. the +DSP chip is nice to have for mixes, as well; the plugs are nice and transparent. but if you've got the $, live it up out of the "prosumer" world, right?

you're right, never enough gear-- if you're a percussionist, that goes for EITHER side of the glass!

[Ted Nightshade]

Why would you want to compress a percussion recording? I don't get it. Dynamics and transients are what percussion IS.

As for never enough gear, that's not my experience with recording percussion. You can never have enough instruments! It's true that being a percussionist and a collector of percussion instruments are pretty much the same thing.

But I feel I have plenty of gear right here, and it does easily as much justice to percussion recording as I've ever heard done.

Pair of nice LDC's
SLAM! (2 channels of great pres and converters- I don't use the limiters)
Masterlink
Monitoring

I could use a couple great dedicated omnis- interested to check out the Josephson/Gefell 617/mk221's- and of course there's always the possibility of doing overdubs by using a multitrack recorder or DAW in addition to the masterlink.

Still, I think it's FAR better to collect instruments than microphones and compressors and all that.