Ron and drummer, Dave met at my house so we could set up. We moved my 60s Gretsch drumset out of the way (too jazzy sounding with the heads I have on right now) to make room for the kit we will be using for the recording – a vintage 60s Pearl kit that sounds great. We’ll be using the hardware and cymbals from my drum kit as well as one of my vintage Ludwig snares – a 1967 Supraphonic. I read somewhere that that is the most recorded snare drum in history. That seems appropriate for this project – plus one for the statistics.
Dave set up the drums and tuned the heads while Ron was setting the recording rig up. Meanwhile I set up the mic stands, chose the mics used, and ran the mic cables to the Mackie. Then we took a dinner break before going back into my home studio and continued with some testing.
The mics we ended up using were small diaphragm condensers as overheads set up in a stereo A/B configuration. We close miced the snare and toms with Shure Sm 57s and an SM 58 on the floor tom, since we were out of 57s to work with at that point. We put an Audio Technica 4033 on the bass drum, since we didn’t have a proper Bass drum mic. I wasn’t sure how that was going to turn out, but to my surprise that mic sounded great on the bass drum. We can EQ that to taste later in the mix.
Some photos of the set up: (pardon the blurry photos. I tried to get some photos without flash to capture the ambience and all I had at the time is my wife’s point and shoot camera).
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- Ron “The Sultan” Tongue manning the board. My 60s gretsch kit in the background. Won’t make the cut – too jazzy with the heads I have on there. This is going to be a Rock and Roll record,…er CD.
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- The set up, and my new bass poses for the shot as well.
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- Close up of the kit – a vintage Pearl Kit from the early 60s that Dave and I found on Craigslist. It was $200 and we split the cost for a rehearsal kit so he didn’t have to lug his “good” kit to practice, but we like it so much it will be on the recording. They sound awesome for $200!!
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- Greta – studio dog extraordinaire
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- Ron – different perspective – still waiting for the files.
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- The “Rig” – If Ron and I had a dime for every time we carried this up and down a flight of stairs…
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- Wall of amps and dog toys.
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- From Ron’s point of view.
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- Ron and drummer Dave – transferring the test files to the MacBook Pro.
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- From the drummer’s perspective.
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- 24 channels in all its glory. So far we have used 6.
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- My #1 Fan. Photo courtesy of my wife.
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- Greta the groupie.