Hi All,
Played a new venue for the first time which was a pretty large room (for a pub gig). A competent musical pal let us know that drums were being lost somewhat. As an emergency measure, I rigged up a spare cheap Behringer dynamic mic as a sort of overhead picking up mostly snare and a bit of kick drum. Surprisingly it worked OK giving just enough drums out front to make up the deficiency.
I've got two spare channels available so aiming for a simple kick drum and single overhead arrangement so interested in any recommendations. Budget wise, I wouldn't expect our drummist to fork out more than about £200 at this stage.
Through bitter, bitter experience I've leaned that making things complicated for a band of weekend warriors is a recipe for disaster so I'm not going down the route of full set of mics, sub mixer and so on.
All the best for your NYE gigs guys,
Pete
They don't want your name, they just want your number.
Comments
It’s amazing how rarely I need to stick up overhead mics on a kit as stages are rarely big enough for the vocal mics not to pick up the cymbals.
Many thanks indeed.
R.
Eqd Speaker Cranker clone
Monte Allums TR-2 Plus mod kit
Trading feedback: http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/60602/
There was a longish thread on here about the pros and cons of using a sub with a PA over the past year or so.
R.
Eqd Speaker Cranker clone
Monte Allums TR-2 Plus mod kit
Trading feedback: http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/60602/
I also totally accept that miking drums has an impact on the PA too. We use a Behringer* 600w powered mixer and Celestion 12" cabs upgraded with Eminence drivers which has been OK for some while but what I'm suggesting may well call for 15" tops as a minimum.
*please don't laugh, it's been reliable, OK sound quality and paid for itself several times over.
Again, thanks for the helpful advice guys,
A pair of 12" tops pushed by a 600W powered mixer is a vocal PA. If the drums can't be heard over that then I think you've already reached the correct conclusion - "why don't we just turn the f*ck down?"
I always said to our drummer that if we need to mic the drums then the PA wasn't big enough for the venue. We now have a 4.4KW HK Linear 5 rig and generally mic the whole kit every gig as I often make multi-channel recordings, but we only have a lot of drums on FoH at larger venues.
R.
Eqd Speaker Cranker clone
Monte Allums TR-2 Plus mod kit
Trading feedback: http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/60602/
The cheap Samson drum mic sets are OK, done loads of gigs with them. Placement of the kick drum mic makes a huge difference .... for best results get it inside the drum to get the attack from the batter head. As with anything drum related though the drummer is everything ... a guy with a heavy foot on the kick and a light hand on the cymbals will make life easy .... but a drummer who beats the shit out of the cymbals but doesn't hit the kick or toms hard enough is harder to make sound good. In general the snare will get into everything, even the vocal mics so