Reply by mbrane
Try to beg, borrow or steal another mic. If you can’t get another SM57, just about any decent cardioid dynamic would work to capture the attack of the upper toms.
If you try to mic all three with a single mic, you’re gonna get a lot of cymbal/snare bleed – unless you’ve got one of those rare drummers that hits his toms harder than the cymbals. If that’s the case, you might not need to mic the toms at al,l if your overheads are done right.
Reply by phreddy
I normally mic drums with just four or five mics: two overhead mics, a bass drum mic, a snare mic, and sometimes a mic on the bottom of the snare. (No tom mics, no hi-hat mic.)
I get a good overall sound from the overheads and then add bass drum snare as necessary. I do prefer large diaphram mics for overheads. I don’t know what the C3000 or the C1 sound like, but if that’s what you have, then C1 on bass drum, 3000’s on O/H, and SM57 on snare seem like the only way to go.
Spend a lot of time on mic placement. I place the overheads a bit unusually. If you look at the drum set like a watch, and in front of the drummer is 12 o’clock and behind him is 6 o’clock, I usually place the overheads outside and quite a bit above the set, at approximately 1:30 and 7:30. It seems to give me the stereo image of the drum set that I like.
I do take a tape measure and make sure that the O/H mics are the same distance from the snare to prevent phase problems.
Reply by erik513
You can’t go wrong with more SM57s. The price and sound are great. When I bought all of mine, I told the guy behind the counter, “I want two 57s, but if you can throw in three boom mic stands for free, I’ll buy a third 57.” And they did it.
I love my drum setup right now: Shure Beta 52 for kick, all toms covered with SM57s (currently have four), a Sennheiser MD421 on the snare, and two Oktava MK012 for overheads.
If I feel the need, I’ll throw the fourth SM57 on the hi-hat, or my E-200 as a distant mic. But that hasn’t been necessary.
Reply by saxplayer
I would mic the kick with the C1 , put the SM57 on snare and set up two mics overhead. Record each mic to a separate track, and you have some good mixing options.