Pre Gain recording Drums

[Guido tum SudenKeymaster]

Hi there,

I've got my new drum set, Focusrite 8PreX and a set of Lewitt Mics. Making my first steps into drum recording, two questions came to my mind:

1. Would you rather leave the mic's pad settings on 0 dB and set the gain of the 8PreX low or the other way round, set the mic's pad to –20 dB and turn up the gain? The Lewitts also have a –10 dB setting, so there could be a middle way.

2. Would you set the gains in a way that after recording the drums already sound mixed with all the fader on 0 dB or stage the gains all the same (I like –12 dBFS peaks) and then have the faders on very different levels?

Guido

• This topic was modified 6 years ago by Guido tum Suden.

[KipParticipant]

if you like the way your mic pre saturate (i have a hamptone jfet that i use this way)i pad everything for the distortion
on my tascam mixer i keep my mic unpadded (unless they are overloading) and the mic pres gain as low as possible
api preamp clones always need to pad they are so loud but sound so good on drums
not to mention ive never had a drummer hit the same way
but every guy has a different idea im destroying the transient with the hamptone on snare and tapeop guys told me i was doing it wrong...so take this with a grain of salt

[Guido tum SudenKeymaster]

I only have the pres in the interfaces. Okay, that's not entirely true, I've got a SPL Channel One.
Should I use the analog pre? One which instrument? Probably snare top?

There's not much on the topic on the net but I found one article, having to do with the noise floor, that said, as a rule of thumb, you should only use a pad switch, regardless of where it is, if you have to.

But I can see what you mean about the gain of an analog pre. Destroying transients of a snare drum doesn't have to be bad. We're putting distortion plugins on snare tracks all the time and some people redirect their signals to a console to do just that.

[KipParticipant]

honestly now days we can do so much after the fact it is probably best to capture clean
after that id take sample of the single hits and 1 more of some destroyed pres getting crushed (i use a sca neve clone (cranked in to clip on hard hits) where the drummer gives me a medium hit ..thick sound)
that way you can blend with your drummers performance
if you dont have overpriced unnecessary mic pres no problem just take those single hits and use waves/slate /whatever plugin and do the same thing
on the spl pre ...i have had good success with a UA m610 (its tube) on mono overhead
i try to thing about gear like this any thing that has transformers will slow down a wave form(lower frequencies pass more easily than higher) .....so this can be an advantage when you get shrill guitars cymbal bashers ect.
dont get me wrong mic placement is more important but if you only had a cheap mackie or a tube console from the 50's you would still be able to do the job moving mics....in my opinion...which is sort of shit

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