I know that this has been covered before...because I know how to search. It was initially brought up when someone was asking about the Yamaha sub-kick mic that's out now.

I'm interested in trying to create one as a kick mic, and wanted to know if anyone out there has had any success. If so, with what particular brand of speaker? I've read about some doing it with an NS-10. Just curious if any of you have some suggestions.

You most likely heard about the NS-10 because Yamaha is who makes the 'Subkick'. Try anything... When I did it we used a 15 and it sounded sort of floppy so I think something smaller, like a 10" or 12" would work better but try anything at all. You're most likely still going to need another mic for the attack.

what about getting an 18" speaker and an 18" kick drum, and physically mounting the driver where the resonant head would go?

toomanyhelicopters wrote:what about getting an 18" speaker and an 18" kick drum, and physically mounting the driver where the resonant head would go?

As ridiculous as that sounds, I've actually thought about that.

i'm assuming a 20-gazillion watt 18" would have meaty enough magnets that it wouldn't bottom out the voicecoil. although maybe it still would.

i'm definitely not gonna try it. though i'd love to hear how it sounded, if it worked.

toomanyhelicopters wrote:i'm assuming a 20-gazillion watt 18" would have meaty enough magnets that it wouldn't bottom out the voicecoil. although maybe it still would.

i'm definitely not gonna try it. though i'd love to hear how it sounded, if it worked.

I agree. Actually, I wasn't thinking about doing this on a kick...I thought about doing it on a floor tom. Suspending the speaker right underneath it. There'd definitely be a lot less chance of blowing it out. I don't know...I might try it out one of these days.

I've seen this done and tried it once myself. The engineers at BBC maida Vale studios favour an NS10 on kick aswell as a closer mic and the when we did a radio session there the results were OK. As I say, a friend of mine made one too and I used it at my last recording. Sounds pretty good though I'm not completely converted. Essentially all it picks up is the lowest of the low end. It can augment the sound pretty nicely (but it can still mess up your phase pretty badly too if placed wrong) and is only really apllicable to a few types of music I'd of thought

I've done it a few times with a 15" (a few years ago...). We got LOTS of bottom end. Tried it once with a 12" and didn't really work somehow. You definitely need something for attack. To me, seeing pictures of electrical audio sessions with a mic on the batter side of the kick (ducked off the snare) was much more of a revelation. That technique really works for me. The kick drum starts to sound like the kick drum in the room. Wow.


Javier Ortiz

I tried several different speakers as kick drum mics and found a couple of things:
(1) Most of them would overdrive and had to be placed more than 5' away.
(2) The best one was a pair wired together in parallel, each 8 ohms, and their sizes were roughly 2" and 5". This combo didn't distort when placed directly in front of the kick like the others did.
(3) Some speaker mics have a very noticeable resonant frequency and this can either work for or against you, depending on the instrument being mic'd.

I use a 10 inch car subwoofer....man does that baby punch like hell! I don't use it anymore because I'm still addressing the bass build up issues in my small tracking room, and I have to make so many cuts in the low end as it is....I have more bass than I need already!