DRUM MICS: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I've had great service from my E604s. I've been using them for about 5 years now. They are rugged, reliable, convenient, and they sound just fine.

I had a guy sit in on my kit last year, a tall gangly guy, and when he finished EVERY tom mic had stick marks on it, but they have never given me a hiccup.

So yeah, I think they are worth it.
 
We use the E604's at Disneyland and I love those mics on toms. Nice and rugged and they sound great. For some reason I thought they were more expensive. I also like the Shure SM98 on drums too. I normally like to use Sennheiser 421's on toms, the ElectroVoice RE20 on bass drums, Shure Beta 57's on snares, and AKG SE300B's on hi-hats and overheads.

However, that said, great mics are great, but you need to plug them into even better consoles too. So if you have great mics, it'll help that Behringer mixer you may have found on Craig's List for $200, but imagine how great it would be if you plugged them into a new Yamaha O1v96 console (at least).
 
We have a Yamaha DM1000 here. What a total pain to use - even if it is a great sounding desk. It's like Yamaha made it and waited a year until they redesigned the user interface.
 
aphrophluph said:
I recently tested a set of Sennheiser E604 Drum Microphones. I am curious to hear what others think of them. Are they worth the $120/each? Is there better money spent on something else?

What drum mics do you use? What mics do you hate?
Click to expand...

I really, really like the e604s. I bought a set of 3 brand new at GC for $270 (had a $75 off coupon).

I like how they really isolate the instrument they're pointed at...very little bleed, very directional, which I appreciate.

I also have an e602 bass drum mic. It's very similar to the e604s with a low end frequesncy response.

I have not been disappointed with Sennheiser e604s and would highly recommend them. I don't think you're going to get a better microphone unless you spend exponentially more money.
 
i also have three of these which i have had good results so far with. I also have a shure beta 56a which is quite good also but i like the fact that the 604's are alot smaller. the rim clips are a bit fimsy though
 
mediocrefunkybeat said:
We have a Yamaha DM1000 here. What a total pain to use - even if it is a great sounding desk. It's like Yamaha made it and waited a year until they redesigned the user interface.
Click to expand...

Yeah, it took me some time to get my head around digital boards in general because you're no longer looking at a dedicated knob for everything (like when you look at an analog Mackie board, for instance). You get into "scenes" and then "layers", etc.,...but once I made the jump, it just made so much more sense. But maybe in a practical application, it's not the best board to use for the "set-and-forget" types because it'll take a second to remember what page you're on and then call it up for any adjustments, so you almost have to have a competent sound man at the board all the time. But I'll take it for a totally transparent sound.
 
After 20 years with electronic drums, I have now entered back into the acoustic realm. I am in the process of buying mics for my 14 piece kit. Ahhhhhhhh! Anyways, this is what I have decided on when they get them back in stock.
Sennheiser drum pack III pro - 4 x e904's(toms), 2 x e914's(overheads), 1 x e902(bass),
Sennheiser drum pack II pro - 4 x e904's, 1 x 902
Sennheiser e905 for one snare
I already have a shure sm 57 for the other snare, and a e904 for another tom. It is like buying another drum kit. :(
This will all get plugged into my Yamaha N12, firewired to my computer. The N12 is kind of cool because it is both analogue and digital depending which way you like to do things. It comes with a condensed version of Cubase AI4, which you can control from the control area of the board, or at the computer. Very versatile.
 
Bo Eder said:
Yeah, it took me some time to get my head around digital boards in general because you're no longer looking at a dedicated knob for everything (like when you look at an analog Mackie board, for instance). You get into "scenes" and then "layers", etc.,...but once I made the jump, it just made so much more sense. But maybe in a practical application, it's not the best board to use for the "set-and-forget" types because it'll take a second to remember what page you're on and then call it up for any adjustments, so you almost have to have a competent sound man at the board all the time. But I'll take it for a totally transparent sound.
Click to expand...

I'm with you on that. It's a serious learning curve though and the difficulty for me is my serious lack of short term memory (dyslexia) which means that I constantly forget where I am on the board and how it's all routed. This is a lot better in the other Yamaha digital desk we have at Uni (OV1) because the user interface is better thought out - even though the rest of the desk is largely the same. I think it's probably mainly a Yamaha thing. They make great quality gear, but I've always found their user interfaces to be somewhat lacking. It was the same on the AW16 I used to use, lots of menus, lots of buttons that do one thing, then half of them only doing one thing very specifically. Difficult.

I do like using digital mixers, but my main experience is on the difficult Yamahas. I'd probably find it much easier on a Midas (for instance) where it all seems much more logical. And I love the flexibility, routing and connectivity (especially optical, which is really, really handy) - it is a lot of complication though and I wouldn't make a newbie sound man use one! I'm just about getting there with digital and I have a fair amount of experience.
 
mediocrefunkybeat said:
I'm with you on that. It's a serious learning curve though and the difficulty for me is my serious lack of short term memory (dyslexia) which means that I constantly forget where I am on the board and how it's all routed. This is a lot better in the other Yamaha digital desk we have at Uni (OV1) because the user interface is better thought out - even though the rest of the desk is largely the same. I think it's probably mainly a Yamaha thing. They make great quality gear, but I've always found their user interfaces to be somewhat lacking. It was the same on the AW16 I used to use, lots of menus, lots of buttons that do one thing, then half of them only doing one thing very specifically. Difficult.

I do like using digital mixers, but my main experience is on the difficult Yamahas. I'd probably find it much easier on a Midas (for instance) where it all seems much more logical. And I love the flexibility, routing and connectivity (especially optical, which is really, really handy) - it is a lot of complication though and I wouldn't make a newbie sound man use one! I'm just about getting there with digital and I have a fair amount of experience.
Click to expand...

Yamaha's are a bit complex. I'm lucky because here at Disney we get all of our consoles from Yamaha, and I have discovered that every one of them, from the lowly O1v96 all the way to the PM1D, once you learn how to run one of them, they all function the same, with the exception of this rule being the M7 console, which now gives you a touch screen to access stuff, so in a way the M7 is faster to use. Yamaha even offers us classes to go and learn how to use their gear, so that's nice. But the learning curve is rather steep - you really have to know your stuff on an analog console so you can visualize what you're doing on a digital one. Fortunately, we're now getting new hires who've never run an analog console at all ;)
 
Well, that's lucky!

We have a DM1000 here which is apparently the worst of them - released a while before the others and as a result is harder to use. I have to operate that desk for some of the exhibitions we have and it's a pain. It's worth the tradeoff though because of the signal quality - it's so much better than the old Mackie we had and the motorised faders/preset options really give it an edge over what we used to use. Like you say, the main drawback is not being able to see everything at once.

A touchscreen just makes so much sense on a desk. Being able to manage EQ with a graphical display, or compression and gate settings would be so great and would eliminate the vast majority of the issues with interface design. Part of me wants an iPad so I can use it to mix my tracks in Logic, so I can get rid of the mouse.
 
Bo Eder said:
Yamaha's are a bit complex. I'm lucky because here at Disney we get all of our consoles from Yamaha, and I have discovered that every one of ... ;)
Click to expand...

Its funny I got a few years back an old Lexicon Super Prime Time that was used at Disneyland (Still has the sticker) which is pretty killer on drums. Sorry not to thread jack.
 
I wanted to like the Sennheisers but think they have way too much mid-bass. I bought one o try it and my cheap CAD mics sounded much more realistic. Then again they suck because they clamp on and struggle with the vibration from resonances..
 
I use the Audix D series mics on my kit and they're in that price range. They sound great and they're are also durable and reliable for giging. I use a D-6 for kick, D-2 for rack tom, D-4 on the floor toms i5 on the snare and adx-51 on the hats and overheads.
 
The E604s are great mics! Very durable, since I've hit them tons and they still work great. You can see them in action here


-Jonathan
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top