Bass Drum Advice

jimidalliance

Hey! I am looking for some advice on getting a decent bass drum sound!! Our drummers bass drum seems to be the weak link in our sound at the moment! I recently traded a studio mic for an AKG 112d. This seems to be a great mic, but one downside to that is that it is showing up all the unwanted overtones! There is a constant 'Honk" on it!!

Does anyone have any advice on mic positioning, dampening, head tension etc? The front skin has a diy hole cut in it for a mic, which is far from perfect, and I know this is having a negative effect. I have told him to buy a new one with a prefab hole which would be a start!!

Any advice or input will be much appreciated!

Shakti

I'm not a drummer but...
How are you placing the mic at the moment?
At a guess don't point the mic at the beater and keep it parallel to the floor no more than a couple of inches inside the sound hole,

Sugarlumps

Go on to youtube, there's plenty of videos explaining this.

Found This Fork Sir

One thing about recording bass drums is that some microphones can't pick up the lower frequencies, so if it's picking up all of the overtones instead of the lower range, that might be down to the mic. Also, play around with the muffling of the bass. It might be too muffled to produce the right sound, or else you may be over adjusting the head to compensate for lack of muffling, although a lot of that is down to personal preference I guess.

Deschain

replace the recorded bass drum with a sample, common practice in a lot of productions.

FlyingIrishMan

A cheap and easy way to dampen the bass drum sound is to put a pillow, or thick blanket inside the bass pressing against the front. Its common practice and can make the bass sound a lot nicer. Less of a echo boom, and more of a bass thud.