Getting an awesome thud out of a kick drum

[Gregg Juke]

Hey Mike,

I didn't see your reply before... Sew away, brother; I'm just being gosh and gaucho. While you are patching your own pants and darning your own socks, I will still be walking around with holes while I wait for my wife to get around to it.

Come to think of it, that might be how Tommy Aldridge originally ended up in that diaper (which wasn't gold-plated at all).

Tony, I used to use a cement block or a mike stand bottom. Simon Phillips swears by paint cans, but I don't know if they're supposed to have paint in them or not.

CK-- What have you got to lose going all-out for the Bonham thing? Add the tin-foil, even.

GJ

[MoreSpaceEcho]

i recorded this band a year ago where the drummer had an old rogers kit, his kick just had an evans emad on the batter, no front head, just a little towel inside. that kick had the archetype Awesome Thud. probably more modern and attacky than what you're trying to do, but it really sounded great.

for thuddy kicks, i've found that the garges recipe described above works really well. take the front head off and pad the batter head down a bunch.

as far as getting the boom to cut through...i usually have my 22" set up with a fiberskyn powerstroke on the batter and a solid front head. playing it, it sounds like an 808. mega boom. it's always come out great recorded, and it cuts through no problem, thanks mainly to the damn omnis on the floor that i talk about in every other post. those things pick up a bunch of the high end smack, and that really helps the kick cut through. i actually get the majority of my kick sound from those, and have just enough of the close mic in there for some low end heft and attack.

also keep in mind that most zep stuff wasn't nearly as dense as most things today are. and that bonham was, well, bonham.

[MoreSpaceEcho]

also, if you have a boomy kick that needs definition to cut through, you can try putting a steepish shelf on it, with the corner freq somewhere betwixt say 50-100. pull the low stuff down a bunch and turn the track up. i usually find this works better than adding a bunch of high end. you can also try some slow attack/med release compression...you want the release not super-fast so it keeps the boom in check...

[Ken96]

I have also seemed to get more thud out of smaller diameter kick drums in general; however my house kit has 1982 Slingerland shells, with a 22" kick. I built my own sub-kick out of another 22" kick that I found at a yard sale, I think it' a Ludwig (assuming it is from the blue sparkles). I mounted a Peavey Black Widow speaker into it, and run it through an EQ during capture. I'll put either a Beta 52, D112 or even a 58 in there with it to grab a bit more tone to blend in if needed (through a hole I cut out), but it gives me plenty of thud, I have to roll of the low end starting around 100-200Hz so it isn't too much. If a client wants more click, I'll put something on the beater side as well.

But I made some brackets to attach it directly to the front of my kick, and I'll cover it all except a little bit on the front side with a heavy blanket to minimize bleed when needed.



I tried a 12" guitar speaker, a 10" bass cab speaker and even a 18" car sub speaker before I found the 15" speaker to be satisfactory, your results may vary if you try this.

FWIW, I also tried a Yamaha Subkick and it was "meh."

[Snarl 12/8]

Hmmm. My homemade subkick wasn't doing much for me boom-wise, but maybe I'll add it back in for my thud quest. Thanks for the idea.

[digitaldrummer]

the subkick will definitely vary depending on the speaker. I tried a lot of speakers and some just sounded bad, others sounded OK and one or two sounded great (to me at least). I found that something in the 6.5-8" range and usually with a foam surround seemed to work best for capturing the boom. I think if the speaker, or the surround, is too stiff then its just doesn't respond to the kick's vibrations as well. look for a speaker that has some travel but moves pretty easily to the touch. but as stated earlier, YMMV.

Mike

[MoreSpaceEcho]

fwiw, in my experiments with a homemade subkick, i found that it had to be pretty much right up on the reso head to get anything useful. and what i got was really all boom, i dunno if that's really the way to go for thud, but...worth a try i suppose.

also, i've been listening to 'some girls' a lot lately, some great thuddy kick on that thing.

[digitaldrummer]

yeah, I would not describe the subkick as thud either - its all BOOOoooomm!

[Ken96]

the subkick will definitely vary depending on the speaker. I tried a lot of speakers and some just sounded bad, others sounded OK and one or two sounded great (to me at least). I found that something in the 6.5-8" range and usually with a foam surround seemed to work best for capturing the boom. I think if the speaker, or the surround, is too stiff then its just doesn't respond to the kick's vibrations as well. look for a speaker that has some travel but moves pretty easily to the touch. but as stated earlier, YMMV.

Mike

I definitely agree that it's all in the specific speaker, and not just the size. I also tried a 15" mystery speaker out of an old Traynor cabinet I had and it was like night and day in comparison to the Peavey.

I should also note that I have some old T-shirts and bar towels stuffed around the rear of the speaker- not completely packed in tight, maybe the bottom half or so of the shell.

[Darlington Pair]

the subkick will definitely vary depending on the speaker. I tried a lot of speakers and some just sounded bad, others sounded OK and one or two sounded great (to me at least). I found that something in the 6.5-8" range and usually with a foam surround seemed to work best for capturing the boom. I think if the speaker, or the surround, is too stiff then its just doesn't respond to the kick's vibrations as well. look for a speaker that has some travel but moves pretty easily to the touch. but as stated earlier, YMMV.

Mike

I definitely agree that it's all in the specific speaker, and not just the size. I also tried a 15" mystery speaker out of an old Traynor cabinet I had and it was like night and day in comparison to the Peavey.

I should also note that I have some old T-shirts and bar towels stuffed around the rear of the speaker- not completely packed in tight, maybe the bottom half or so of the shell.

A Traynor speaker is most likely a Marsland because that's what was in most of them, I've got Marslands laying around because I replaced my speakers, tried them a few years ago as a subkick and didn't like them.

[floid]

that old trick of slicing a "flat spot" out of a round beater with a razor blade

apparently i'm still something of a newb, i've never heard of this and ain't quite sure i'm picturing it w/ much accuracy.

[supafuzz]

I have a feather pillow and a half empty can of paint in the 70's slingerland kick drum. A client pointed out last week that the paint can says "DEEP BASE" on it! I'll have to post a pic. It was unintentional and coincidental.

Been using an Ev ND868 thru Matrix audio h-03 [this is based on API]into DBX 160vu and then in drumagog adding the #12 electronic kick in parallel for super deep boom. I'm afraid to use my d12 because if it breaks that's it. . The 160 definately has a sweet spot because if you over compress it's just a fart.

[cgarges]

that old trick of slicing a "flat spot" out of a round beater with a razor blade

apparently i'm still something of a newb, i've never heard of this and ain't quite sure i'm picturing it w/ much accuracy.

You know how a felt beater that's really been played a lot will start to flatten out on one side? Like, if you look at it from the top, the part of the circle that hits the drumhead becomes a straight line? Do that with a razor blade to make one side of the beater flat against the head and it will help eliminate "flutter" if you bury the beater in the head. Does that make more sense?

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[thebrush]

Hey Carl! Some really great responses on this thread (especially loved ken96's custom kick tunnel). Thought I'd add in my two cents.

I find that tuning my kick really well helps to dial in on the sound I'm after faster than relying on mics, eq, and compression. That said, I have a whole blog entry on how I tune my kicks here: http://www.chrisbrushdrums.com/bass-drum-tuning/. I will say that 24" drums can be deceptive to tune since tuning it too low will place the fundamental below human hearing and you'll have a flabby, plastic sounding drum. Sometimes you have to counter-intuitively tune bigger drums up a little to get them to ring out nice and low.

Beyond tuning and head choice (I love Evans EMAD and Aquarian Super Kick II batter heads), I find muffling the batter head more than the resonant head yields more overring of the drum and muffling more of the resonant head yields more attack. I usually have a blanket or pair of towels somewhere between those two extremes -- touching both heads. I play with the balance of the muffling until I start to hear a character I like. You might want to keep muffling more toward the batter head.

I also would make sure to use a round felt beater and would stay away from Falam pads and such. The kevlar patches usually lend to a plastic sound with lots of top end attack.

The felt strip is a great trick, but if the strip is too wide, too much in the center of the drum, or too tight against the head, I find the tone goes away. You could try minimal muffling of the batter head and only muffle the resonant head with a felt strip offset to one side.

To echo other's thoughts on the sub kick idea (I usually use a custom sub- woofer-turned-microphone or big ol' FET to capture deep "boom"), I do find that getting a sub-woofer about an inch or two from the resonant head is required for maximum thud. What's more, I usually find my sub kick likes to sit at about 9-10 o'clock, well toward the outer edge of the drum head.

As for the eq and compression, try rolling out some low mids (anywhere from 250-1k -- sweep to find the sweet spot) to let more of that "oooof" through. With compression, be careful not to use too much as most compressors will react first to low frequency parts of the signal. Compressing a kick too aggressively can yield a more slappy, attack-laden sound (which you said you did not like). Sometimes, I like a subtle limiter (read 10:1 style opto limiter, not a 20:1 and above brickwall limiter) on a kick. While some of the transient is sacrificed, the sustain or "boom" comes up a bit. Of course, compression during tracking might force you to deal with more snare bleed later in the mix.

I hope that helps somewhat!

[Rufer]

part of the key is to use something heavy (a large stone, brick, round mic stand base, or weight) to slightly push the muffling up against the head.
Charlotte, NC

Is there any concern about having the something heavy causing the drum to go out-of-round?