Al Schmitt uses 451s top and bottom snare. And 414s on his toms!

I agree, but I'm still after a balanced kit sound, I think you can still get that R&R vibe by just hitting the drum well. I also think that if a drummer is aware of his instrument he should also take into account the room he's playing in and be tuning his playing, if he doesn't like what he's hearing, its not going to be resolved by micing placements necessarily, although this no doubt helps.

Problem for me is several fold. My room is not ideal, comfortable but small, ceilings a little low. Also, in house kit is not great - tho not bad either and I've yet to work with a drummer who really knows how to tune a kit - or play to session standard.

Recently been building in some damping and various treatments, but the snare is still wild. I feel that frequencys around the crack of the snare 5-6k are flying all over the room. This is duplicated on the overheads and so if you can imagine this, the snare and the snare 'room' sound is heavily present in the mix, which in turn tends to render the overhead sound pretty useless.

Let me ask a question here, how do you like to place your overheads? What areas of the kit do you think your aiming at?
I've just bought some new stands that will allow me to reach right ove the top of the kit and look down squarely, which I hope will help. Up to now, I've had them set at about 60degrees, which seems to skim across the kit.

?

I like ORTF, enough phase coherency but a little more spread then x-y. I tend to go for a cymbals kind of overhead lately, not necessarily a complete kit picture. I'm not building my drums starting with the overheads, I start with the mono room mic, close kick and snare and use the overheads to bring some spread and lift the cymbals. If the drummer hits the snare really hard, it can be a problem. You could lower the overheads so they are closer to the cymbals. Also, compressing the overheads with a fast attack and fast release can really lower the snare in the overheads relative to the cymbals. You need a clean fast compressor for it though and this is one situation where I actually like digital compressors...

Good luck,
Dirk

[QUOTE=84K]The Beta 56 won... no question... QUOTE]


I posted a couple of years ago about how I liked the Beta 56 on Snare, got bagged by all.

but still , love the Beta 56 on top, 414uls underneath.

[QUOTE=adamcal]cheers!

i have fornd a 57 lets a little too much hi-hat bleed through, a hypercardioid seems to reduce this. i like a pro-35 on bottom. --and always check you phase!

I wouldn't say that I work with crap drummers but I have had a Geffell 70.1s totally drilled over a snare drum and it was out near the edge to. Not sure how he hit it but he sure did **** it

very cheap, great snare mic: shure ksm141. takes ungodly amounts of spl, sounds good. lots of crack. try micing the shell with it, too.

I've begun recording drum tracks for one of my bands and I wanted a pair of hi-quality SDCs. My church used to do live worship with real drums & amps, but now everything is electric/electronic so there is a huge mic locker just sitting in the back collecting dust. I was able to borrow two mics and they happened to be AKG 460Bs; they sound amazing! I wish I could find two more. My snare drums have never sounded so good.

I use the 460 for the top of the snare, positioned at 9 o'clock, and an SM57, e609, or Radioshack vocal mic(hey, it has amazing hat rejection!) for the shell. Both mics have there backs to the hi-hat.

Conversely, if I'm going for a more open jazz/folk sound, I'll use an MXL V67g 8 inches away from the snare in the 11 o' clock position.

beyer 201

I've used new 451s on top/side or top/bottom before with some success, although I found there was sometimes a weird... "rubbery" quality to the top track. Could've been any number of factors.

My 414 doesn't seem to go well with my snare so far, but I tried a Mojave MA-200 about a foot in front of the snare and hat angled to look at the snare's center that was nice and bright with some chunk.

Last weekend I used a 4 mic setup in a house with wood floors and 10-foot ceilings that I'm pleased with -- train beat on brushed snare, a cymbal, kick, and hat.

The snare was the focus and was close-mic'ed with an Audix i5 through an A Designs P1. I also had a Beyer M160 overhead for the kit and cymbal and a Royer 121 an equal distance from the hat/snare that brought out the body and bottom (snares) of the snares; both those were through API 512c's.

Individually they were all usable, with their own character, but combined with a Shure Beta 52a on kick (-> Great River MP-500NV) I got a good result.

I could blow into my 121 and break it while my breath of air might be only 35 db.

Similarly, I could push quickly on the batter side of a kick drum making very little SPL, but creating a lot of air movement going through the hole on the resonant side.

A snare drum has a lot of SPL at the location of the hit. It has more air movement where the vent hole is. Putting your royer on the vent hole might break it. Aiming it at the stick impact probably will not.

See the difference now?

Figure 8 can really help there. If you can get the hats into the null somehow, it can be gr8.

An engineer I know that does PA rentals has these hard plastic cages that screw over the capsule of an sm57 to protect it from drum strikes. I'm not sure where he gets them, I'll have to ask.

Has anyone tried to flip the two?

I've recently begun using an SDC on the top with a 57 on bottom, and I dig the tone I'm getting for 70's styled snare. Anyone else use this method of mic placement?

Way back in the 2005 posts a guy mentioned using an SM57 and an SM81 together on the top.

I started doing this on C&W gigs in order to pick up the brush sticks and brushes better.
For the rockin' stuff I'd use the SM57 and for the more deatiled stuff I'd use the SM81.

In the middle of it all I forgot to mute the SM81 and it sounded great along side the 57!

I just have to REALLY trust the drummer to put two mics in the line of fire.
It's not so bad if they kill a 57, but it IS bad if the hit an SM81.

I've been using an i5 and NT5 combo on snare top for the last little bit.

I use a 57 underneath but It seems I never end up using it.

If you try my snare mic technique the drummer would pretty much have to be aiming for it to hit the mic. Back about an inch from the shell as if it was poking over the top, about half the capsule pointing over the rim, and then another condenser on the shell. I still love the 460 for the top of the snare it just sounds like a hi res version of what you get from a beyer 201. I've been using a peluso cem6 lately for the side, both mics still through Daking 52270b's

Slightly off topic guys, but I was wondering if any of you have ever tried using a Sennheiser MD-421 on top snare with either another dynamic or a condenser below/on the shell?

Thoughts?

...and GO!

c 38 top 57 bottom

or beyer 160 top 57 bottom

or altec 633a top 57 bottom