So....

Last night I was recording another drummer playing my kit. I have the big amber Vistalite Bonham reissues. My kick drum is a 26" x 14", front head is a Remo Ambassador with a felt strip, no hole, and my batter head is a Powerstroke P3. There's no muffling inside the drum.

The mic I had on the resonant head was an Audix D6 and I had an SM57 pointed at the batter head.

I could not get a big, heavy sound out of that drum to save my life. I moved the mix six times, maybe more. Standing in the room with the kit, it sounded monstrous. Back in the control room, I was just hearing "pang pang pang." I checked phase issues to no avail.

The toms sounded fine.

I finally stopped moving the mic and moved the bass drum into the closet. I used a vintage 3 ply Ludwig kick for the session instead.

Now, this room is still getting broken in, and there may be some standing wave issues I need to iron out, but the 3-ply kick sounded pretty good.

Anyone else ever have difficulty getting a usable sound out of a vista bass drum?

I'm curious as to why you chose a D6 on the resonant head ? Admittedly, I'd only used one once on a Pearl Masters Custom kick and I had to eq in a bunch of lows later. Weird/excessive high end on that mic as well. It's a cliche thing to do, but next time you use that drum, why not try a condenser a little further back ?

m.koren wrote:I'm curious as to why you chose a D6 on the resonant head ? Admittedly, I'd only used one once on a Pearl Masters Custom kick and I had to eq in a bunch of lows later. Weird/excessive high end on that mic as well. It's a cliche thing to do, but next time you use that drum, why not try a condenser a little further back ?

Interesting observation, as that would perfectly describe the issues that I was having with that mic.

I have had good luck with that mic in our other studio, though. I made the decision based on how well it's done in our A room. However, in the A room we have a set of ribbon mics that we use for room mics, and they pick up the bass drum nicely. I may have just gotten so used to having that to augment the low end that I wasn't listening to the D6 that critically.

I had the same situation DFTR. Tried different placements, tunings... swapped it out a Pearl kick.

skatingbasser wrote:I had the same situation DFTR. Tried different placements, tunings... swapped it out a Pearl kick.

I guess the low-end is best captured at a distance with that type of kick.

I think that perhaps the heavy plastic shells make the room that much more crucial for reverberation.

I like the sound on the Bearclaw record, too.... but the ceilings in the drum room at Electrical, as I recall, are 40 ft?

Unfortunately, I don't have that much space!

I'll see what I can do when my Fat Heads get here. I am about to go to the studio and do some mixing in the A room... I'll see what sort of sound we were getting from the D6 in there, isolated from the rest of the mix.

We have a pair of FET 47s in the A Room... I don't like sneaking around with the boss' mics, though. If something got dropped/banged/stolen, I'd feel like an asshole.

I think that we (Bear Claw) got a better sound with my Vistalite kick in the the smaller room (Kentucky) in Studio A. D112 for resonant with a 421 on the batter. I've tried this with my little setup as well and it turned out pretty good. I do think the room mics help a lot with this kind of kit as well. Examples of my vista at EA:

My kit in Studio B: http://www.bearclawrock.com/songs/without_the_sun.mp3

My kit in Studio A: http://www.bearclawrock.com/songs/point.mp3

Scott
Bear Claw

I think a D6 works great with a ported head but non-ported I would agree with the LDC. This may sound strange but I have had a lot of good results with SDCs on non ported kick heads. (SM81, MK012, 184)

Shit, another thing I just thought of is dropping one of those tiny Lav mics (Crown, Countryman) in to the port hole of the kick to get the internal resonant freq goods. Has anyone ever miced the little port hole itself??? Or try a PZM on the floor just in front of the kick. Or if you feel crazy-go-nuts put a contact mic (piezo) on the outer head itself.