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While I was recording at Mushroom studios in Vancouver, they used an Auratone speaker about six feet in front of the kick drum. I've recently seen the new Yamaha kick drum mic which is an NS10 woofer in a wood shelled drum. Since the Yamaha is probably a bit too expensive for my tastes, I was wondering how I could wire up something myself. How would I make it balanced? I think that (if it works with a cheaper speaker) I'd opt for wiring an Auratone... Any ideas, suggestions or opinions? (I realize that it's gotta be mixed with other mics to suppliment the high end loss with this kinda setup.)

this is a pretty cool technique, i'd also be interested to hear some of the responses

yeah, im really curious about this..
in addition to swat's questions, i have a couple...

does the speaker size effect how the speaker will sound as a mic? what about magnet size? compliance? sensitivity? etc..

here's an article i found that has some semi-interesting info on the subject..

http://psbg.emusician.com/ar/emusic_bottom_fishing/

if you want to use something like a speaker to record, just stick the output from the terminals into a DI box. It will balance the signal for you. You can find all sorts of things to plug into DIs when you need some crazy lo-fi shit for recordings, telephone handsets are a personal favourite, especially the old ones with carbon grain micrpohones.

i've done this. I get my speakers from the side of the road on garbage day. They all sound great for different applications. I'm fond of setting a regular microphone atop the speaker and then mixing the two together.
Speakers freq response sounds like a big boost below 100 hz, and then flat up to about 2kHz, then a steep cutoff.
I've heard earphones are the same except they come back in the high end.