Micing a kick drum with a speaker?

[Alley Cat]

I've read about people using a speaker as a kick mic in the studio.
Have any of you guys tried this, and if so, how did you like the
results compared to a mic? Does a larger speaker work better than a small one, or is a large speaker not sensitive enough? Seems like a large speaker wouldpick up more low end. I have a 12" & 10" speakers both mounted in cabs that I could use for this application. Is there anything I need to know, like should I run the speaker into a passive DI and then into the mic pre, maybe? I'm guessing you need a lot of gain for this
to work. I'm not too unhappy with the present kick sound but am looking for more low end.

Al

[dMiurge]

You actually don't need a lot of gain. A powerful kick can push a speaker quite a bit. No need to use a DI either, just wire an xlr cable to an old speaker and run it through a mic pre. However, it rarely will sound good alone. You still need to use a mic to capture the detail, but it does add a nice low thump to the sound.

[djimbe]

In my limited experience, a smaller speaker works a bit better. I use a cheap 8" for DIY home stereo. It's got a pretty lightweight cone, so it moves easily. Made a sort of cradle that screws to a mic stand to hold it up in front of the drum. Search here for threads on this topic; I think one has some wiring tips. Bottom end for sure, but I hear a bit of definition too. Works well with something like a 421 on the batter side, and the speaker out front...

[leigh]

UTFSF

[kylethompson]

Never really like the results for kick, but this method works great for bass guitar. It could be lore but I belive most of the motown bass guys like James Jameson were recorded with a a bass spaeker as mic. I've alos heard that "rain" and "paperback writer" were recorded this way s well.

I rigged up a kenwood car stereo speaker in a milk crate that I use to record bass tracks and occasionally as an auxilliary mic on kick. The car speaker is, however, a 2 way meaning that it has a woofer and a tweeter hooked up to the same input via the x-over. The sound I get out of mine is actually suprisingly full range. Just xlr and (pins 2 and 3 to hot and ground with nothing on pin 1) right into the mic pre. super high output. They look like this only without the extra tweeter.
On bass they give a really warm low end without the huge difference in volume from note to note. I rarely compress the bass when using the speaker mic, but have to use lots when recording a regular dynamic mic.

[beebe]

i used a guitar combo with a 12" speaker. there was a 1/4" input on the back that was already wired to the speaker. i just unpluged the amp from it, pluged in a mono 1/4-to-XLR cable and ran it to the preamp. i just set the amp in front of the kick. it required very little work. with the speaker being 12" the sound was kind of ghetto bass.

[nacho459]

I tried this once with a 15" bass cab. WOW! 80hz and down! Talk about subsonic. I had to pad my mic pre down as far as it would go to keep from clipping. I didn't end up using it much in the mix, but I can't wait to do a drum and bass or hiphop session. This would work great!

Sonic BOOM!

[djgout]

hey alley-

we messed around with this the other day at work. we just took a crappy old bookshelf type speaker and hooked it up to a 1/4" jack then put it through a DI and it was fucking awesome.

we tried it as a FOK mic as well and nuked it with a distressor, really cool, there was so much low-end that we put in the low cut filter on the pre and shelved down the lows about 3 dB at 150Hz.

If you've got a cab with a speaker mounted just plug a 1/4" in then into a DI and you should be all set.

[ludwigpatricia]

You could purchase the
Yamaha SKRM100 SUBKICK Low Frequency Capture Microphone
only $300.

[ludwigpatricia]

You could purchase the
Yamaha SKRM100 SUBKICK Low Frequency Capture Microphone
only $300.

[dMiurge]

You could purchase the
Yamaha SKRM100 SUBKICK Low Frequency Capture Microphone
only $300.

Or you could build one yourself with an old speaker and a mic cable for almost nothing.

[ludwigpatricia]

Correct, I guess I should have put one of those smiling faced emoticons near the $300, to show that I thought it was funny that Yamaha jumped right onto a homemade product and massproduced it themselves. "Smileylearingface"

[greatmagnet]

I guess the other thing that would be cool about this is the utter lack of bleed from the other instruments, right? I am dying to try this...I didn't even think about the using it on bass guitar idea.

[multitracker]

A good application for this is when you don't have a big room. (basement studio) Some rooms you just can't get 20-40Hz going. It falls off in the mix. This trick (paired up with a mic on the kick drum and done correctly) will often give you that sub!
MJ

[headache9]

bringin this up again... I've been using a speaker as a mic with great success... but it puts out a hell of a hot signal. I have to keep my preamp all the way down & it still clips a little..still sounds great though. It's been mentioned but nothing really detailed has been said about making a pad with a resister.
Anyone have luck with padding their speaker mics?

I have a friend who wants to try my speaker mic live but I told him the sound guy will shit when he sees how hot the signal is so we better try to knock it down. Any suggestions on resistance?