Drum Microphones 101

Drums are an important part of any church service. They provide the beat for the rest of the instruments and congregation to follow and they fill out the sound of the worship team. When you are seriously recording your worship team it's time to get a good set of drum mics. Also if you purchase a drum shield, mic the drumkit, and run them through your speakers you gain better control over the volume of the drums in the sanctuary. Believe me, this can really enhance the quality of your worship. You will get less complaints about the drums being to loud and it really fleshes out the sound. As with anything in life you get what you pay for. The gold standard for drum kits is the DP line by Audix led by their award winning D6 kick drum mic. This microphone is used by the very best drummers in the world. If you are serious about getting into mic'ing your drums give us a call at Kingdom and ask for an Audix drum kit. They are the best!! Now there are also some more affordable kits that still pack a serious punch. Electrovoice has the best bang for the buck out there with their five piece kit the KDMDK5 for $400.00. Make sure you have the neccesary number of open channels in your board to handle all the drum mics. If you don't, buy a small board to just mix the drums and run an out into your main console. You still want a high quality mixing board though so I would use an Allen and Heath AHZED14 from Kingdom. What you will need: - Unless you have 5 to 8 open channels on your snake, go ahead and buy a seperate drum mic snake. This is a much better solution that running 5 to 8 seperate mic lines back to your booth. - If your mixer does not have enough channels buy the AHZED14. Normally I never pigeonhole customers into one product but this is really your best option. - A drum shield is a must if you plan on running your drums through the system. We sell several types here at Kingdom depending on the size of your drum kit. - You need to purchase as many XLR cables as you are buying microphones. Always buy new cables when you are buying new equipment. It lowers the chance of the equipment not performing well due to old cables. - My best suggestion is this. If you have a drummer who can keep the beat but isn't a really a master of the drums buy the Electrovoice Kit. It sounds great and will give you a good recording. If you have a drum virtuso who can wow the crowd or if you want the truest sound possible, buy the Audix DP7 or Audix Elite 8. You can't get your hands on a better set of drum mics. If you really want to go over the top take a tip from my pal Rob Docherty, the Tech Director of Quest Community Church, and buy a couple of Shure SM81's for your overheads.

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  • Great point Jason! The gates that Kingdom sells are the Behringer and DBX models. They are sold in 2 channel or 4 channel arrangements.

    The Behringer units are a good choice to go with a less expensive drum kit, ask for the KB2CL or the KB4CL. They are compressor/limiter/gates.

    If you purchased the Audix kit or another premium kit you should go with the DBX units, which are the 166XL which is a 2 channel compressor/limiter/gate or the 1074 which is the 4 channel gate only.
  • just another quick addition to what Stevens has said, you may also want to add a gate to the sound system when you are adding your drum mics. A gate comes in real handy when you are putting mics on drums. Because of the close proximity of the mics, they can pick up sounds from other drum heads or even the cymbals. Adding a gate to the mics, will allow only the sound from that paticular drum to come through. You can set the gate to open(allow audio to come through) at a certain level. Assuring only the sound from the drum you have miked will come through. Kingdom carries compressor /limiter/ gates and can help get you set up with one for your drum set.
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