Amplifying Kick Drum?

Paladin

Just wondering what way we should do this in our band.

The drummer had a crap microphone in the kick drum going to the PA and it sounded utter crap (got nice big bass bins so its not the PA rigs problem).

Are there any recommended effects boxes for between a microphone and PA for a kick drum? And anybody recommend a gigable budget microphone for kick?

What other ways are there to put the kick drum through the PA and get a proper bass sound from it? I dont think the drummer wants to get an electronic kick.

Maccattack

you could try a compressor but if i was you id buy a good mic.

Doctor J

What Macattack said, what mic are you using? Bear in mind that the percieved pitch of a bass drum comes from the resonant head. A lot of it may have to do with how the bass drum is tuned and your mic placement too. If you have your mic placed really close to the beater head and it doesn't pick up low frequencies well anyway then clickety click is all you get.

sei046

make sure ur kit is tuned for mics. There are plenty of great budget mics that will do the job. You want the nice boom with a bit of click for definition. The T.bone drum mics are nice and cheap

BobTheBeat

Micing a bass drum, can be a bit pernickety. Have had untold trouble myself with my kit.

All starts with a decent application suitable mic. Check out the AKG D112 if you want to spend about 150. If this doesn't suit, check out the cheaper AKG D11 model. Similar design and response to the 112.

Nextly, define your tuning. Do you want a full bodied live 'boom' sound, or are you looking for a tight low end thud? For a boomier feel, obviously lessen the dampening inside the bass, and match the pitch's of the batter and resonant heads. I sometimes find, a little padding like tissue on the inside of the resonant head will cut down on most overtones.

For a low end thud, add some dampening (dont overdo it!), and adjust your tuning on the batter side.It will be a trade off between general response of the pedal beater and tightness of the skin, i.e. the looser the skin, the less the return speed of the beater is. Your drummer will know what 'feels' right.

Cutting a mic hole in the skin, should help things as well. "holz" are available for this application, and are available from any decent drum shop

But for starters, you really cant go wrong with a decent bass drum specific mic.!

sei046

just remember the kit may sound **** on its own but when miced it can be great. So dont tune to what sounds right. Tune to the mics so you get the best sound

Doctor J

Cutting a hole in the skin should be approached with caution. Have a read of this.

Eoin Madsen

sei046 wrote:

just remember the kit may sound **** on its own but when miced it can be great. So dont tune to what sounds right. Tune to the mics so you get the best sound

At the end of the day, a head is either in tune or not in tune. How high or low you tune will affect the "tone" not the quality. Most would consider the purpose of micing to be reproducing the sound of the source as accurately as possible. If you're trying to make your sound with EQ you're already fighting a losing battle. If you know how to mic a kit and operate a mixer you'll get a better sound with the kit sounding as close to the way you want it to as possible. The common error is in being misled as to the sound of the kit because of the acoustics of the room you tune it in - close mics won't pick up on that, so sometimes what sounds nice from where your sitting isn't what's hitting the mics. But frankly, it's better to be using EQ to compensate for that, ime.

Paladin wrote:

The drummer had a crap microphone in the kick drum going to the PA and it sounded utter crap (got nice big bass bins so its not the PA rigs problem).

Are there any recommended effects boxes for between a microphone and PA for a kick drum? And anybody recommend a gigable budget microphone for kick?

What other ways are there to put the kick drum through the PA and get a proper bass sound from it?

Regarding mic effects, nothing ever goes between the mic and the mixer. Compressors, eq, sub-synths etc., go into the channel insert. Other effects are operated in an auxilliary effects loop.

Without knowing what's "crap" about it, it's hard to judge what might fix it. 9 problems out of 10, the drum is badly tuned or, often in the case of the kick, is over- or under- dampened. A lot of drummers have difficulty understanding that a "bass" drum doesn't have to be tuned especially low. Bass drums already have bass, that's why they're bass drums. They don't need to be be tuned uber-low for extra bass, and they rarely need bass added with EQ if you get them in tune. If the batter head is tuned too low it'll sound like a fart. You can get nice punchy low sounds out of a high batter.

Failing that, a good bass mic wouldn't hurt. The AKG D112 is a good suggestion. Similar mics would be the Shure Beta 52A and the Sennheiser E602.

sei046

ye thats fair enough but if your not willing to compromise your on stage tuning your going to start needing some gates in your rig just for your drums

Eoin Madsen

There is no reason to compromise anything unless either the equipment or instruments are of particularly low quality. You cannot possibly anticipate a necessity to use noise gates in a broad scenario.

sei046

once again its depending on your sounds

Paladin

Thanks for the info guys.

As regards the actual drum sound, without amplification it sounds fine, though imo overdamped because of a blanket. The drummer disagrees and says he like the sound that way.

In any case, the amplified sound is nothing like the real sound. As Eoin says this may be because the sound getting to the microphone may be different to that audible to us a few metres away.

I suspect however that the microphone is the biggest problem here. However when I worked in a sound studio we used to put on some compression for the drummers who had no concept of power control, used noise gates, had expensive microphones, had pro-tools (lite only) and the effects and reverb etc on the recorder were **** hot.

Now my problem is that I reckon if I had all that equipment I could get a good sound from the drum in a studio, but without spending anything like that cash I am clueless as to what makes a good amplified drum sound.

The microphone needing upgrading I knew about. I think for live stuff the gating is probably not necessary. Reverb, yes. There are digital effects on our powermixer to add reverb, but I dont really think they are great. Better than no reverb though.

Anyway, the general consensus seems to be good microphone with properly tuned drums going to PA (with a little reverb) is all you need?

Are there any bass drum effects that can alter the amplified sound? Maybe a combo compression, reverb,gate,EQ unit? Had a browse around Thomann but havent come across anything. Anyway, Im supposed to be working

Doctor J

What does it sound like, compared to the actual sound of the drum?

Eoin Madsen

You should be able to use fairly simple eq to get pretty close to the sound of the actual drum, assuming the mic is even half decent. Kick mic is usually missing a little high mid - something in the 3-5k range. If the mic is inside the drum, don't hesistate to boost the top as well. You get very little spill into a kick mic.

How is the sound of the PA in general? Do you have a graphic EQ? And what mixer are we talking about? If the plan is to "enhance" the sound of the kick, a compressor is the first thing I'd reach for. Reverb can be nice, but I'd use it sparingly and probably applied to the whole kit as a group. Unless you're going for that 80s-rock kick sound. Then it's all about saturation, and extra top.

Paladin

Ok we did some tuning work last night at practice.
We relaxed the blanket against the kick head and loosened the skin a bit.
There is a 5 " hole in the front skin. The drummer loosened that skin a little too.

We got a boomier sound out of the kick to begin with, but not quite as nice as I would like. Without the full blanket there is a little resonance which would be annoying for recording but not so noticable live.

Apres Microphone, with no eq, no reverb, its a farty pop.
The PA btw is a 600W Peavey power mixer, 2 X Behringer 15" Bass Bins, 2 X 12" Peavey tops. It sounds good for vocals and guitar. Our bassist has his own 500W rig so we dont put him through the PA.

A little more detail about the farty pop...
Its a hollow kind of sound. Its like the freq range between bass and mid is amplified to the max whilst missing the real bottom range. I think it would also sound better if the damping on the kick to begin with allowed it to boom for a split second longer.

Anyway, it seems as though the microphone is currently not catching the bass frequencies so thats probably the problem we are having. A compressor might be a good idea too. Maybe some reverb for that lovely tasteful 80's sound

Doctor J

Try moving the mic around in the drum, front to back, top to bottom, side to side. Mic placement plays a huge part in the sound. Some areas are more condisive to a clicky sound, others more boomy.

squibs

[Homer]mmmmm..... farty pops[/homer]

Paladin

Doctor J wrote:

Try moving the mic around in the drum, front to back, top to bottom, side to side. Mic placement plays a huge part in the sound. Some areas are more condisive to a clicky sound, others more boomy.

I think I will probably be best getting back to you all for advice AFTER we get a decent microphone. Getting the AKC D11 I think (drummers call, its his money). Hopefully that will improve things quite a lot.

Cheers for the help, though if anyone can recommend a all in one compression, EQ etc we could use then by all means post

Thanks guys. Boards is a great resource.

Eoin Madsen

Any particular reason why the heads were loosened? Tbh, the first thing that springs to mind when you say "farty pop" is lack of tension on the batter head.

A behringer composer would do a reasonable job for the compression. I can't think of any budget all-in-ones. If you really think you need an EQ, try grabbing an Alesis PEQ if you can find one. Honestly, with a good kick mic you should be able to get a respectable sound out of the mixer eq.

Paladin

Heads were loosened to try and extend the length of time the skin resonated to accentuate the 'boom'. I dont know much about drum tuning so I let the drummer do this sort of stuff, and to be fair he seems to know what he is doing when it comes to the drum sound. He just doesnt know anything about amplifying it. Getting the AKG d11 (I think, its toe E103 one on Thomann). Should help.
Will try and talk the drumer into getting a compressor too.

Doc_Savage

i'm gonna fly in the face of all this mike talk and suggest a trigger and a processor for the PA it'll consistantly give you any sound you want from the bass drum and there won't be any frigging around with "mike placement" every time you set up for a gig... just plug in and go!

Paladin

Hmm, could you elaborate on this technology? Are you basically talking about an electronic kick?

Doc_Savage

its a trigger on the inner skin of the drum ... midi if you will?
and it just controls a midi drum processor!

don't worry about the whole "midi sounds fake" thing! IT DOESN'T!!
you can get it to sound like a tama gretch or pearl kit.... really good consistant sound.. and it will react dynamically to the playing!

i'll try to find a few examples and prices of it!

Doc_Savage

example of a trigger with a jack connection:)

http://www.music123.com/Alesis-SR16-i66497.music

thats the processor... the price of a mike

the triggers about 10ying

it says it has 127 different loudness levels(basically really good response)
you should be able to demo one or something similar in a decent music store!

Eoin Madsen

Well, it'd be 0-127 (128), like everything else in MIDI. I'd concur, it's unlikely you'd hear the drum machine kick as being distinctly naff in a live scenario, as long as you can get a sound from it that you like. Personally, if I was going the MIDI route I'd get a sampler and use some real studio kick samples though, rather than an SR16.

If you have a good expensive kick drum I still don't see why you'd need to though. The sound should be there if you can find it. And to be fair, "mic placement" doesn't take long. Not longer than setting up a drum machine anyway.

sei046

i agree with eoin there. Its nearly just as handy to place the mic right
Bass drums arent the worst for that

Doc_Savage

Eoin Madsen wrote:

Personally, if I was going the MIDI route I'd get a sampler and use some real studio kick samples though, rather than an SR16.

i thought that alesis has that capability! oops!

Doc_Savage

sei046 wrote:

i agree with eoin there. Its nearly just as handy to place the mic right
Bass drums arent the worst for that

looking at the rest of this thread the guys seem to be having a bit of trouble with getting a sound they like! this seemed like an alternative route that noone had discussed.....

thought i might as well suggest it!

sei046

fair enuf bud. your dead right

Paladin

This drum machine is interesting but Im not sure about how you set it up for use to be triggered with a kick drum. Does the clock input trigger a drum to sound once and the trigger at the real kick acts as the clock input?

Doc_Savage

Basically yeah!

the triggers on the inside skin of the drum and when you play the "real" bassdrum the trigger signals the sampler/drummachine to play the desired sound....

Paladin

Sorry, I was busy at work so didnt explain myself clearly. It was more the technical aspect of setting up that drum machine I was wondering about. Its a moot point now since the drummer has decided to buy the AKC D11 mentioned earlier.
Its just I was reading the manual on the drum machine but I couldnt see any specific about hooking it up to a trigger but it did talk about hooking up an external clock. It didnt explain clearly how this worked though.
Anyway, like I said, drummer gone with the AKG anyway

Cheers.

Doc_Savage

best of luck with it!

happy gigging!:D

Eoin Madsen

External clock is for syncing tempo or time index. It'd be a MIDI input or a specific trigger input that you'd need. It depends on the trigger as well. You might need a third piece of equipment between the trigger and the drum machine.

Doc_Savage

we don't!:p

Eoin Madsen

:v:...then can you tell us how it's connected up?

Doc_Savage

the processor i'm farmilliar with uses the trigger plugged in via a standard jack into the socket that says trigger input!

it's alesis and about 10 years old! rackmounted, and getting dusty! its a dedicated drum processor!

very similar to one you'd get with an electronic drumkit!

BME

I'd recommend Shure Beta 57A (or AKG D112) with Behringer Multicom rack processor (Compressor/Gate/Enhancer and few extra buttons)

I reckon a good Kick sound is worth €300

Paladin

The drummer just bought 18" bins I hear. Havnt seen them yet but Id say he is skint after that and the mike. Dont know why he didnt consult the band before the bin purchase, but I suppose he wants sole ownership. He is a bit notorious for equipment choice though

The Multicom processor is probably an investment Id recommend he make in the future.

Heathen

Triggers are the Business.. i recently got a DDrum4 se Brain unit and full set of Triggers.. however when im giging i only trigger the bassdrum as i use Axis longboard double pedals which are very fast but not really loud.. the triggers really do the job.. you have peopl coming up after telling you thet they could feel the bassdrum in their chest at the gig.. Thats what you want!! specially when your running a 25 mile lap in a gig haha