i have a metal band coming over to my small time home studio. they have to use my drum set, which is terrible but gets the job done with a little eq. i have been fooling around wit my loose floppy bass drum with pillows and all types of things.

i am tying to get it to sound like that metal bass drum that we all know...metallica, panterra, ect. i heard to put a quarter on the beater and a credit card on the skin. its not cutting it. any good tecniques anyone knows to make that metal sound possible? i ususaly use a beta 52 if that info is needed.

thanks

try putting the 52 where you'd normally put it, then put a dynamic mic as close to the beater head as possible, just to pick up the clicks, and mix the 2 together. i've even heard of guys miking the beater head from the same side as the pedal, on a 45 degree angle, aimed at the same spot.

good luck

Use a wooden or plastic beater if you can -- that sound can be really hard to get with a felt beater. Get most of the laundry out of the drum so the skin really pops with each hit. You may need to gate the ring a little if it gets too wobbly and boomy. And dont be afraid to use a little eq -- the sound youre going after is more or less artificial and can be hard to capture just using careful mic placement. A 3 or so dB boost around 3-5k (a little different for every drum; you'll hear it when you get it) and a corresponding one an octave up at 6-10k will get you all the "SMECK" you desire using a Beta 52, even without the extra batter-side mic.

wood beaters, quarters, credit cards, sandbags, super low tuning, etc.

nothing working?

i know it's cheating- but find someone who will let you borrow a Roland drum brain (the TD-5 has alot of particularly "meh-tell" kick sounds) and trigger it off the recorded tracks and blend them together.

it will sound VERY authentic!

in fact, that's how alot of the "masters" (Vinnie Paul, John Tempesta, etc.) have gotten their sounds- even if they won't own up to it!

as far as EQ- no mids whatsoever. none!
lots of highs above and beyond 3K and crank the lows at 50-80Hz.
also covering the kick in blankets around the mics to trap/exaggerate the sound usually works wonders.

in general- basically do the complete opposite of everything people normally advise on this message board to get a good kick sound!

wow! haven't thought about thrash in quite sometime!
i am going to listen to Sepultura's "Arise" RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!

In my experience tuning a key element. Try tuning the beater head as loose as you can while still getting a clear note, making sure the skin is in tune with itself. Tune the reso up. It will sound less resonant with clearer attack. You'll have to experiment to see how high you have to tune it. I ended up buying a drum dial to do it faster and be able to replicate my results. Check this out http://home.earthlink.net/~prof.sound/ for lots of information on tuning. I would take out all the pillows and other stuff (they deaden the drum too much, I think) and try either with a towel rolled up touching both skins or one of those evans pillows you can velcro in place (the towel might move around...). I've also heard good results with the remo muf-l (and even one of these cut in half). Defenetly go for a wooden or plastic beater. I find the wooden one tends to sound a little mellower but more natural(?), they contribute a lot to an agressive sounding kik drum attack. Placing a mic on the beater side (I've had good results with a stedman N90) helps gatting the sound you have in the room. Remember to duck it off the snare signal or your snare will get pretty thin.

Hope this helps

Javier Ortiz

somebody around here's gonna lynch me for this but.... if these guys know exactly what they want, and your terrible drum kit can't do it without loads of EQ, and even then fails to perform..... well... why not mic the kick, turn that recording into a midi sequence based on the peaks, and clock a sampled kick to that?

these guys probably won't care what you did as long as it sounds how they expect metal drums to sound. this assumes you have the tools to do that, as well.

note: i would never do that on a recording of my own in a million years

for me the better way to obtain that kind of sound FAST is to trig the drum. for metal like Pantera / Metallica , it's peraps not the good thing to do but it's the fastest for sure. Now if you want to use traditional method, i think you should try other tunnings + other mic method. peraps try placing a good dynamic (or peraps a static) somewhere near the beater side is a good thing.
also a lot of high mid & high eq will be need to obtain that kind of sound i think (around 4-5Khz the bass drum get that kind of sound). peraps u can also try a very short gate & a bright, gated reverb on this.

ps: sorry if my english is crappy, i've done my best

Why all the coyness about using triggers? I love them both correctively and creatively and find a good ambient snare drum trigger blended with the original is a lot more effective than putting verb on it, I would absolutely definitely trigger the kick in this situation (especially if the band have a limited budget and time) and, hell, I'll trigger beeps off handclaps, anvils off hi hats and whatever takes my fancy while I'm at it. The idea it somehow makes us less of an engineer is laughable in the way that it doesn't make a guitarist less of a guitarist if he uses alt tunings and plays one open chord through a string of effects.