LOL Remo heads, pulling out of their collars since 1957, after they stole Chick Evans design and produced it incorrectly. Why do you think they keep bringing out new lines of kick drum heads? They all want to be an EMAD, but they haven't figured out that having snaps on your bass drum head PROBABLY adversely effects the sound.
I haven't seen a Remo head pull ever, other than overly cranked kevlar heads and overly cranked crimp lock pinstripes. I've never seen it happen on drum set. And just because a company does something first doesn't make them the superior company.
Hahaha I actually just bought a pair of used Zildian A Custom 13" hats. I paid $160 for them. I'm in love with them tbh. They are real chinky, but very clean. The snare will be loud as fuck, so loud it will bleed into every mic I am using when tracking drums.
I really want to go, but I don't think I can afford it this year. All my money is going into my band right now. I'll definitely be there when it's in Austin though.
Yeah, it really works out well...I do most of the marching percussion shows, so Bands of America and Drum Corps International are all right here, as is PASIC, so it makes my life easy, haha. And that shit is expensive, so I feel ya on that.
You know, I can't even play drums for shit, but as an engineer I have an almost obsessive fixation with chasing the perfect snare sound. We recently got a Tama Starclassic snare at the studio (standard 14"x5", made of Birch and Bubinga), with some kind of Evans heads on it, and it sounds incredible. I hope it ages well though - past experience has shown me that Remo heads seem to maintain their sound for longer, even though they're not quite as nice as Evans when they're brand new. Today I recorded a Yamaha snare with some ancient looking Remo heads, and that sounded pretty amazing too. Had a very Gavin Harrison sort of flavour to the tone, even if the actual playing didn't. I've got no idea what it was made of though, and the drummer who brought it in didn't know either. He said it just came with his first kit and he was surprised at how good it sounds even now. How do some of you guys go about micing up your snares? I've gone through tons of different phases over time, but at the moment I'm loving the sound of an SM57 on the top head, and a second one about 4 or 5 inches away aimed at the side of the shell. Just tried it today, and I find the shell mic way more useful than having one on the bottom head like I always used to. It seems to capture the room space around the drum in a way that just sits nicely in the mix without any trouble. Wish I'd tried it sooner.
I like an Audix I5 on the top head. And I've read good things about an AKG 414 silver face on the bottom head. There's also something cool I've seen drummers do, but I can't seem to find an example of it. It works similar to a noise-reducing system on a phone. You put a mic far away from the snare and use that to remove certain overtones from the snare. I dunno. I need to find out what it's called.
It's my job to care about it you yeasty cunt. JC, I've seen people do a similar thing to what you're describing as a way of getting the hi-hats out of the snare track, and it just involves flipping the phase on one of the mics. Never had any real noticable success with it myself, but then perhaps that's because I'm not totally sure how to go about positioning for it. I used to get driven mad by hi-hat spill, but these days I just accept it and don't gate the snare as hard so it sounds more natural.
I used to be a big advocate for miking hats, but then when I recorded with Jamie, he told me that he never mics hats and that he prefers how they sound coming through the overheads. Hearing how the drums turned out, I really like how the hi-hats sit in the mix.
I'm of the same school of thought. I still always put a close mic on the hats, just for the sole purpose of cranking them up in the drummer's headphones. It's a useful way of making the inexperienced (or just plain shit) players stop hitting the fucking things so hard - it really works! I almost never use that mic in the mix though.
So I'm buying this Mapex Black Panther Cherry Bomb. My buddy in Fredericksburg works in this new music shop... they operate out of a warehouse and supposedly their overhead is really small so they are able to get awesome deals... then on top of that because he's a friend (a friend of a friend, really) he's able to make the deal better. Basically he said the best he can do for a brand new one is $215. While the best I've seen from the major distributors is $289. I'm really stoked about trying out this drum. It looks so damn pretty, and sounds pretty amazing from this video (for the price!).
on my behalf. What's cool about that series of drums is that my nickname in the band is Pantherlady. So when I told them about this drum... they were very happy about the name of the line.
+1 for the DW edge here Dan. We have one as a house snare at Chapel and the last session in got a sound easily comparable to slate (also have a beast of a room for drum recording)
As a drummer, I hate it when engineers want the drum to sound like a sampled drum....the whole point of actually recording a kit is to make it sound like a drummer is actually playing it in a room. Just because we have the technology to record 25 mics at once doesn't mean that we're going to get a really fantastic drum sound...some of the best sounds ever recorded were 3 mics in a room with hardly any EQ. Get a drummer that can EQ themselves in the room, any kit, a decent snare, and nice cymbals...seriously, it's all in the hands to get tone. Engineers and drummers both are becoming lazy and would rather comp a pre-recorded kit to get it to sound right the first time, which is dumb, because then EVERYTHING sounds the same. Lame.
Key problem: Most drummers (most musicians in fact) are a bit shit, lol. In essence I totally agree though. Can't beat the sound of a great player in a great room, no matter what they're using.
My Mapex Black Panther Cherry Bomb has arrived. So far, even without having done much to it, it sounds incredibly better than that Pearl snare drum I had. So glad it's finally here, and I got a great deal on it.
The thought of spending well over £100 to reskin my whole kit for christmas depresses me. I think I can get discount in my local music shop, but it probably won't be much at all. Can anybody recommend a good site to buy skins for cheap? It has to be done though. It's much overdue and my band will be recording an album soon. I'm thinking with trying Remo again (ambassadors on emperors, CS dot on snare). I've only ever used evans G1s and G2s on my tama starclassic toms. I still haven't made my mind up about the bass drum batter head...
I don't have anything of worth to contribute, but I find the fact that any snare drum is marketed as a "Black Panther" hilarious.
Last weekend we recorded 6 new songs for Mekanism (sans bass & vocals), and the engineer said he really liked my snare sound... It's a midrange Sonor snare, and I didn't even change heads for the drum before going in, just tuned it hastily. I really have no idea how the sound will turn out because most of the bands that guy produces have a 100% sampled snare, as is the case on our first demo, where I used the in-studio kit, lol. The engineer told me he wanted to keep as much of the natural sound of the drum as possible. We'll see.
If I'm recording a real kit, I always do everything in my power to keep the real sounds if I can. Sometimes it's inevitable that samples will need to be used, but I really try to avoid doing so, and I dislike having to do so for anything other than the kick. Even with extreme metal you can use the real kit sounds more often than you'd think, as long as you approach the recording in the right way and there's a good player to work with.
The thing that cracks me up about metal kicks is that they always sound a piece of shit. Why do people ever sample that shit?
