Internal Mic Placement

F

Faptastic

Junior Member
Hey Folks,
due to several reasons (isolation, room, laziness ;) ) i decided to mic my drumset internally. The whole kit ist already set up for this (i did my own mic holders, drilled xlr-jacks and so on), and i tried several placements of my mics, but i can't get to get any good sound from them. It all sounds kinda "inner-tube".

So my question is: Do you have any good tips for the mic placement? Which head the mic should point at, how close should it be?

Thanks in advance :)
 
First try to get rid of the "inner tube" tone with tuning, then placement/direction, then EQing. Pics of your mount would help.

I've done internal BD mic mounts two different ways; currently, with a Kelly Shu. Prior, with one of these mounted upside-down inside the drum, using the BD's tom mount bracket and the memory lock (in case the wingnut ever failed) from the tom holder I no longer used (the pipe diameter is 1", same as the old tom mount), and a cutoff piece of microphone boom stand (of course, the end with the threads) held in the clamp, which of course held the mic clip & mic. Both worked great for me.

I always pointed the mic toward the corner of the drum though, rather than straight toward the head. Dunno if that's the cause of your inner tube tone. Experiment!
 
I have nothing. I have always wondered about a mic inside a drum. It never sounded like a good idea to me. It seems to me there are a lot of frequencies just bouncing all around in there. It has to sound different inside the drum, and not better I am guessing.

I mic my kick drum inside but the reso head has a port. I just think it would sound boingy, miced internally w/ a full reso head. As convenient as internal mics are, and they really are convenient, if the sound isn't right, the convenience part is moot.

Need to hear from people who internal mic with killer results.
 
Neil Pearts tech uses a Kelly shu in Neil's bass drum. He aims the mic on a bit of an angle towards were the head meets the shell.
 
The mic is located kinda close to the bottom head, facing the dead center of the head. I hope you can see it:



So i will have to go the long way and try all different possibilites i guess? That one is gonna need some serious time :/
 
Most of my kit is miked internally and it sounds great. Only the smallest drums are miked externally and there is barely a difference between the two. However, I found that I had to invert the phase on all of the internal tom mikes to get rid of that "inner tube" sound.
 
Faptastic said:
The mic is located kinda close to the bottom head, facing the dead center of the head. I hope you can see it:



So i will have to go the long way and try all different possibilites i guess? That one is gonna need some serious time :/
Click to expand...

Well, first off - mics inside toms and snares never really sound good, period. This is basically why so few people do it.

Those that do tend to do it because of their isolation advantages in extremely loud situations - think arena concert loud. But then it still takes lots of drastic eq to get them to begin to sound normal.

One of the biggest problems besides all the boiingy resonance is the lack of stick on batter head sound - which is to say, if you're thinking to continue to peruse this (which I wholeheartedly discourage you from doing) then you'll want to get that mic turned around and point it towards the batter head - though not necessarily at the center of the head.

Getting a the best sound (and I use the term very loosely) which will require some fiddling with placement, angle and distance from the batter - and of course each trial will probably entail removing one head and re-tuning the drum (another reason why folks don't do this).

So, sorry - I get all the reasons why it seems like a good idea - and I get that folks still sell products to help with doing it... but in the past couple of decades that this has been toyed with, and touted, it has never caught... because pure and simple.... it never sounds good.

Inside bass drums absolutely - in fact for bass drum's with two intact heads (no port) it can be the best solution for getting a versatile, usable, modern sound. But in toms and snares? Not a good thing.

My advice - pull them out and get your money's worth out of your microphones as they will sound a hundred times better above the batter heads than stuck inside the drums.

David
 
I missed it in the OP that he meant all the drums, not just the BD. So, I wonder why it generally works so well in BD's, but not so much in toms/snares...?
 
People are after a different sound from the bass drum to the rest of the kit, and also the head tension is usually so much lower than for any other drum, which means you get less of a standing-wave effect inside the drum.

Think of how much you'd struggle to record anything adequately in a cylindrical room with a high ceiling and smooth wooden or metal walls...that's effectively what's happening here!
 
Personally I'm against putting any transducer inside a high velocity air chamber, especially when it's not fully protected from the air turbulence.

Dennis
 
audiotech said:
Personally I'm against putting any transducer inside a high velocity air chamber, especially when it's not fully protected from the air turbulence.

Dennis
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We're pretty universally talking about dynamic mics for this application and they're general made pretty sturdy. As for air turbulence, I seriously doubt there is much more (or even as much) inside a nearly sealed tom tom as there is smack in front the front head port of a bass drum - and dynamic mics get placed dead on in that action everyday. I've never heard of any concerns about mic fatigue over time, even with anyone's d12's, RE20's, etc. which tend to be much older.

I wouldn't stick a nice LDC or a ribbon mic inside a drum - but heck, except bass drums, I've no tendency towards doing it with even 57's.

David
 
dcrigger said:
We're pretty universally talking about dynamic mics for this application and they're general made pretty sturdy. As for air turbulence, I seriously doubt there is much more (or even as much) inside a nearly sealed tom tom as there is smack in front the front head port of a bass drum - and dynamic mics get placed dead on in that action everyday. I've never heard of any concerns about mic fatigue over time, even with anyone's d12's, RE20's, etc. which tend to be much older.

I wouldn't stick a nice LDC or a ribbon mic inside a drum - but heck, except bass drums, I've no tendency towards doing it with even 57's.

David
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Micing my kits in this manner I never have that problem, but I've had problems when mics were requested inside of the drums, including the established May system.

DSC_0211-1.jpg


Dennis
 
Brundlefly said:
Most of my kit is miked internally and it sounds great. Only the smallest drums are miked externally and there is barely a difference between the two. However, I found that I had to invert the phase on all of the internal tom mikes to get rid of that "inner tube" sound.
Click to expand...

Would you be so kind to post a few pictures of your mount, positon etc. and a (flat?) soundtrack of your toms?
 
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