Newbie mic hunter

TipsusMagnus

Senior Member
Hey guys! I'm looking to upgrade the microphones we have at church. We have a six piece kit set up--one kick, one snare, four toms. We have two SM81s--one for the hats, one as an overhead mic--a Beta 52 for the kick, and I think five SM57s. Someone told me that SM57s aren't really good for toms. Is this true?

Anyway, they're pretty old and some are already breaking down. What mics do you suggest for the toms? And do we have to set up two overheads? I seem to see two overhead mics set up in live settings a lot. I'd really appreciate the help 'cause I'm next to clueless about microphones.
 
I bought a set of the audio-technica kit pack with plans of up grading later as I could afford it, well that was 10 years ago and the sound im getting for the money spent compaired to the sound I will get after spending a crap load to up grade I have found to be not worth the money unless I plan to make a professional recording in which case I will go to a pro studio and use their gear. For live sound and for the recording that I am doing now the quality of the AT's are more than good enough. BTW not a big fan of the 57's on drums, I have a few and their great for miking guitar amps and such but I just dont care to use them on drums, the AT kit pack mics work much better in my opinion.
http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/aa1dae76db28f937/index.html
http://www.audio-technica.com/cms/wired_mics/53a2a9876608b80f/index.html
 
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Sennheiser e604 - very hard to beat. Great sound, compact, easy placement. The e904 is supposed to be one level higher in the Sennheiser pecking order, but for live application, you're not going to notice a difference. Three pack of e604s is $355 from Guitar Center. I bought mine with a $100 off coupon. Great mics, certainly recommend them. I use them primarily for recording.

SM57s are fine on toms, but they are a little bulky and awkward for placement. Hard to believe they are "breaking down" - I've driven nail with SM57s are they still work fine (might be a little ugly, but definitely not breaking down by any means).

If you're running some SM81s, budget is of little concern!
 
There is nothing wrong with using Shure SM57s on your toms, in fact i use them a majority of the time on my rack toms with Sennheiser MD421s on the floor toms. Shure SM81s are a very popular small capsule microphone with very good characteristics in self noise and a very linear frequency response. If you want to try something different on the snare, try an Audix I5, it's similar in sound to an SM57 but more robust and can survive stick hits a bit better. Much of the time it's the positioning of the microphones that has more influence in the quality of their sound than the particular make of microphones themselves.

Dennis
 
if you find out how much you have to spend and decide what it is you need to mic (just drums? vocals? guitars?)

then i'll do you an inventory list with prices and where to get them
unless budget really isn't an issue?
 
Thanks for the input, guys. Ultimately, the budget's not up to me, but we can put it in the range of SM57s and SM81s.
And yeah, these are just for the drums, primarily the toms. I don't mind the SM57s but they've been there for as long as there's been a mic'd kit in our church, and they've had one too many stick hits and even a few drops (no, not by me). Sometimes they don't seem to pick up as well as they used to, and there seem to be a few loose components inside. I'll have to check. But yeah, we thought maybe it's time to get some new ones. Hopefully more compact than SM57s so they don't get hit often.

Dennis, good point. I think we have the placement down though, but I guess it doesn't hurt to experiment every now and then.

One more problem. I'm from the Philippines. Aside from Shure and AKG, there's not a lot of other drum mic brands here. Nobody carries Audix (can you believe that??) and I think the only Sennheiser mics I've seen so far are vocal mics. So yeah. How's AKG? I haven't heard a lot about their drum mics.
 
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