Everyone knows there are hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to mic up a drum kit. We're going to concentrate on a pretty standard way to mic up a "rock" drum kit. We've used a Palmetto kit with a Kick, Snare, Hat, Hi-Tom, Floor Tom, Ride and Crash.

For the Kick In mic, we've used and AKG D112 mic. 5" back from the head aimed 3" off the beater.
For the Kick Out mic, we used a Nuemann Fet 47. 3" from the back of the head and 5 1/2" from the rim.







For the snare top, we went with the "standard" Shure sm57. 1 1/2" from just inside the rim at a 50 degree angle aimed at the contact spot.
For the snare bottom, we used an AKG C452EB. Mirrored image of the top snare mic.





For the Hi-hat, we used another AKG C452EB, 4"up and 3" from the edge, angled toward the outside of the hat to help reject bleed .





For the toms, we decided to use Sennheiser MD421's. Both are 1 1/2" up just inside the rim at a 50 degree angle aimed at the center spot.





For the ride cymbal, we used an AKG C452EB 18" up aimed 7 1/2" from the edge.



For overheads, we went with AKG C414's. We placed them over the center of the kit 45" up off of the snare head. 16" apart, aimed toward the ride and crash cymbals.





There was no compression or EQ used on any signal. Everything was going through the API mic pres on our board. Please listen to the examples below and then let us know your thoughts in the comments section.


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