Reply by edion2
Pavement – you pretty much have the answer already with what to do with what you have. For the future, I swear by the AKG D112 on kick. I’ve been using it for many years and it has never disappointed me. AKG mics in general can take high SPL and are great percussion mics.
AMS is also offering the D3700 cheap – it gives you more of the “crack” (attack) on each hit on the toms. I’ve used them and they sound good.
I have a three mic package from CAD (three tom mics). I’ve heard a lot of good things about the Audix drum packages that go for under $500.
You don’t have to spend a lot to get good sounds. The AKG packages are a real bargain. Get one if you can. Make sure you get a D112 for the kick… you won’t be disappointed.
If you don’t own the C3000, AMS is selling the C3000/C1000 package for the price of a C3000. I use the C1000 for overheads. They’re nice! The C3000 is hard to beat on acoustic guitars. Works well with sax and trumpet. Wonderful on female vocals. The C1000 is a versatile mic too.
Reply by fishtop
I think you’re lucky you’ve run out of mics before you waste one on the high-hat. I never enjoy high-hat tracks – most of the time I spend forever trying to kill the bleed in other tracks.
For me, hi-hats either take care of themselves, or are a problem to eliminate.
Reply by leeflier
Yeah I agree, you definitely won’t have a problem hearing the hi hats, between the overheads and the bleed from the snare track (a SM57 has pretty good off axis rejection so you should be able to place it in such a way that you don’t pick up too much hat). If anything, there is often too MUCH hat. Some people mic the hat just so they can flip the phase on it and try to cancel some of it out.
Well, I’m going to throw a big monkey wrench in the works here just for fun. Rather than using two stereo overheads as most people do, I usually use a single overhead. You can use one of your C3000’s for this. I usually place it right over the drummer’s head.
So what to do with your other mic? Well… it depends on the material. That’s the cool thing – you can position it differently for different sounds.
If you want a lot of bottom end, put it a few feet in front of the kick drum, and at about the height of the top of the kick. Move it around to the drummer’s right a bit, if you want to pick up more of the toms (which you probably do since you don’t have enough mics for all of them).
If you want lots of toms, position your overhead mic so that it’s centered over the snare, and your second C3000 over the toms and a bit lower than the overhead.
There are a lot of mic positions that I find are better than the standard stereo overhead configuration, depending on what kind of sound you’re going for. Try them all and see what you like.