crappy kick sound... beta 52's fault?

[frugalpole]

i figure it is better to blame the mic than, i don't know the mic pre a/d conversion, (me)...

so what the heck is w/ the beta 52? does anyone actually like this for kicks? any suggestions on how to use it, or is my best use to toss out the window?

my 2 largest issues are:

1/ the sounds it gives me need lots of love, ie compression, eq... and i'm not talking a touch here, or a roll off here. i'm talking major surgery esque.

2/ no matter, the kick always sounds a bit phased. this is a bounce of a single mic. so i'm fairly sure the phase-quality isn't mics in/out of phase, but rather something else.

sample

my chain here was, beta 52 --> motu 896HD stock pre's. fwiw, the motu is now gone. replaced by a metric halo uln-2 (whichi am quite pleased w/), and i think i am about to make the beta 52 disappear unless somoene can convince me that it is really worth keeping. cause i'm not sold.

the drum kit in questions is a decent yamaha kit.

i probably will track some drums again this weekend to get a feel, but... i am i wasting time w/ the beta52?

[amishsixstringer]

The beta 52 is my favorite mic on kick. It sounds like you have your kick drum wound waaayyy up. Try tuning it down a bit. you shoule be able to get a good sound with a good kick and that mic with just about any pre.

[frugalpole]

The beta 52 is my favorite mic on kick. It sounds like you have your kick drum wound waaayyy up. Try tuning it down a bit. you shoule be able to get a good sound with a good kick and that mic with just about any pre.

i'll give that a try. i'm not a drummer... but i just acquire a very nice custom kit in a trade (40" projection TV --> kit).

i've pretty much just woken from the haze of lyrics. you know, the music exists for the lyrics, all you hear is lyric/melody/groove/song --> not the quality/tone/flavor of the sound created.

any suggestions on placement? my room is not designed for tracking drums. i deaden it ... but...

[I'm Painting Again]

simple thing to check in case you haven't done so..check to see if your cables..especially the speaker cables are wired in phase..the kick should be pushing the cone out not sucking it in on the hits..

sounds ok in the sample..sounds like your kick is really tight though..

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i just acquire a very nice custom kit in a trade (40" projection TV --> kit).

you won that one.

[googacky]

I thought we were supposed to be talking about imporving our micing of children..... or baby goats.

[Mudcloth]

I was gonna suggest you ask the parents to take the kid outside the restaurant.

[amishsixstringer]

Here's something I wrote on another board about this. It kind of applies still.

How far is the microhpone from the beater head? If it's really close, your bottom end will sound muddy. Try it about 6 inches away from the beater and actually put the microphone closer to the shell of the drum. (I usually end up with it about 3" away from the shell actually" and point it at the beater. If you want to get really specific, I usually try to point the exact center of the mic pickup pattern at the edge of the beater. This should get you close. The Beta 52 is a beastly mic.

Backing up, though. How is the drum tuned? What kind of beater is being used? For a little more punch, you may try tightening the beater head a bit and use either a wood or hard felt beater with a kevlar beater pad on the head itself. If you don't have one of those, find an old tom tom head and cut a baseball sized circle out of it and tape it to the head where the beater touches. I'm not a big fan of the quarter thing myself.

Next, how about dampening? Do you have anything touching the head to dampen it from resonating freely after being struck? Sometimes this is needed to get a punch sound from the drum. Start with a tee shirt and roll it up like you're about to hit someone with it and lay it down in the bottom of the drum against the head. If the results are good, but not enough, get a blanket or sweater. If it kills the sound all together go with something smaller.

Are the spurs of the drum lifting the shell off the ground? I can't stress enough how much this will effect the punch of a kick. Try to make the front end of the shell about 2 to 3 inches off of the ground. It will be better isolated from the floor and allow the drum to breathe.

I wouldn't eq the kick to tape unless you are running to a compressor first. I prefer to have eq (If I'm going to use it at all) before the compressor. Most of the time with the kickdrum, with a good player, I'll save this for plugins. There are always expections.

With EQ, it's the normal "scooped" thing for most rock kicks. If you sweep a fairly narrow band of eq somewhere between 45 and 65Hz you'll notice that at one point the drum will get really loud. It will get louder at all points, but somewhere in there it will make it really pump. You don't really need to boost here to get the bottom end like many assume. Instead, go ahead and double that number. Say, 50Hz makes the drum really bump, move to 100Hz and with a fairly narrow Q (2.4-3.0) CUT that frequency a few dB. Then double that number again (400Hz) and cut a little wider chunk out of that. Sweep around there a little too. Sometimes something else will work a little nicer. Ususally a little bit lower works (250-400hz is usually what I end up with). A lot of people will go and boost 3 or 4KHz at this point to get some snap in there. Sometimes you'll need to do that, but others you wont. FOr this reason that's the last frequency I play with. Make sure you keep puting the drum in and out of solo when making these changes. The context of the mix is MOST important ALWAYS over individual tracks.

Once you have some eq, and you're still not punching, you may try some compression. Especially if the drummer is a little bit inconsistant with his/her hits. For that punchy sound, once again, I usually start with a slightly slower than normal attack time for drums. Maybe start about about 30ms and a kind of long release time. What you're doing is letting the initial transient snap through, and then attenuating the signal where the drum is booming and keeping it attenuated until all the ring is gone. Usually a steeper ratio is involved here as well. 4-6:1 is usually pretty good and grab up to 4-6dB of reduction on the hard strikes. You might get a little pumping, but that is cool to me when looking for punch.

Again, the kick drum is a beastly thing and is hard to control, but once you understand how to get the sound that you need, it is very very fun to impress your clients or friends with. Take care and good luck!

Sorry I can't help you with your kids though. I'm still lucky enough not to have knocked any bitches up yet, but I'm only 21, so the odds are against me.


Neil

[frugalpole]

Sorry I can't help you with your kids though. I'm still lucky enough not to have knocked any bitches up yet, but I'm only 21, so the odds are against me.


Neil

neil, are you knocking other things up? --> fixed the title. thanks.

good read. i'll try that stuff for sure.

also, fwiw, here is the kit i will now be recording w/. you know the trade for the projection TV.

[xonlocust]

also sorta sounds more like a typical in-drum sound. you might try using 2 mics, have that as your in sound for the attack, and put a 2nd mic outside the resonant head for low end whoomp and blend to taste.

sometimes having differing source materials lets you not eff with so much processing. of course you just need to check yr phase relationships with the extra kick mic...

i also like my beater heads tighter for the springy rebound off pedal like what yours sounds like, but use the resonant to tune your low end - just north of floppy as they say. capture that on another track and go to town... consult the person playing while you're making any tuning changes of course...

good luck. mic's probably fine. placement/tuning - imo.

[amishsixstringer]

hahaha, we had our fun. Anyhow, that's a beautiful kit! Wish I had that in my space. Yeah, the thing I posted was a little out of context due the the differing questions, but I didn't feel like typing for 20 minutes. I was going to mention that the kickdrum in all the other mics blended with your inside mic probably wouldn't be as bad, but splitting a bunch of little hairs seems to make a thicker head of hair in the end. (I made that up. feel free to quote me on it.)

[farview]

In my experience, the Beta 52 likes to be just inside the vent hole in the reso head. Like have the grill inside the drum with the rest of the mic outside the drum. putting it really close to the batter head, like you would a D-112, doesn't sound very good.

[Kevin Kitchel]

I don't like the Beta 52 very much. I prefer to use either a AT4047 or a 421 (usually one or the other, not both). And when I run sound live, I will use a 57 on the kick before I use a 52. I'd rather use that on a bass cab or a metal guitar.

[farview]

It really depends on the sound you are trying to get out of the kick. You have to want that scooped sound other wise it isn't the right mic.

For example, I do a lot of aggressive rock and metal. A 421 (by itself) just won't cut it. It ends up sounding too thin without a lot of work or another mic or two to capture the boom.

However, for more laid back kind of stuff, a 421 works great.

[PeterAuslan]

I was just having this conversation with some engineers about the '52. One engineer had spoken with a Shure rep who said that the best placement was just inside the hole but pointed directly at the beater. It was not meant to be placed close to the beater.