Best quality cheap Drum Mics?!

[Madhouserjd]

hi all, my first post so be gentle! Im a noob to all of this malarky so i need some help in mic selection. I have recently bought the Presonus Firestudio, so its time to get something to plug into it!! Ideally i would like a set of mics that can mic the majority of my kit, which are versitile enough to be used elsewhere as well, for example recording guitar amps of acoustic, percussion (djembe) vocals, and random samples.

My kit consists of 4 toms, 2 snares, single bass and a hefty amount of cymbals. I can live without the second snare, but ideally i would like most toms miced and obviously snare, cymbals and bass. Ive been looking around and the Shure PGDMK6 is in my price range and would cover my needs if i bought a SM57 for the snare.

Could anyone tell me is this a good mic package?
would i be better off buying seperate mics?
and is there any similar better packages available? and would the mics in the shure package be versitile enough to record vocals and averything else? (i would have the sm57 as well)

My budget is £2-300.

Any feedback, new ideas appreciated! :-)

[Electriclight]

Here's Brandon's take:

Drum Microphone Packages: Why I Don't Like Them

Also check out the reviews section on this site.

[garageband]

Enough with the SM57 on the snare thing. That's so 30 years ago. The Audix pack is nice. You get the better-than-SM57 i5 and excellent d6. The others are good too. That's a solid place to start. That way you have a good group of mics to build off. A piecemeal approach requires a lot more knowledge and money and time you could be spending recording drums. Mic'ing the snare side is a pretty advanced technique of limited musical usefulness. A lot of trouble for a very small incremental improvement.

It would freak my wife out if my toms had mice in them.

[rugrat]

I am trying to find out what mics to buy myself. But so far I have figured out that better to get three or four good mics then to buy a big package of crappy mics for cheap that you will want to replace soon. Better to buy mics that you will keep as long as they last. (unless you go pro )

You will need at least three mics to do a descent to good recording.
1 kick mic
2 overheads

I'm in the process of buying an audix D-6. Several drummers I have talked to say this is their favorite kick mic. That is $185 new at
http://www.midi-store.com/Audix-D-6-kick-drum-mic-p-16317.html

I don't know to much about overheads. I personally want to buy the rode nt5 which has some good reviews. That runs for about $310 for a pair on ebay.

If you want more mics sm57's are pretty good. Audix and rode make good stuff to. I wouldn't buy a pack if I were you. There are very few good mic packs.
(most good mic packs are way beyond your price range)

Although I would really recommend just getting three good mics. A lot of recording engineers only use four mics.

I hope this helps

[Barryw]

Originally Posted by Madhouserjd

...ideally i would like most toms miced and obviously snare, cymbals and bass.

There are several good drum mic techniques depending upon what you seek... BUT...

Multiple mics hearing a single sound source leads to phase problems.

In LIVE/PA sound you probably need to close-mic everything to avoid feedback, but for recording I usually find that micing every shell DOES NOT give a good drum sound. Shells, and most instruments need a little room to breathe to get balanced sound.

Look up the 3:1 micing rule/mic phase problems.

I normally do 2 OH, kick (maaaybe 2 mics for shell & beater so I can adjust the balance later), and a snare/hh mic. I'll usually burn a room ambiance track or two (and then usually discard it during mixdown).

-Barry

[garageband]

Barry's right. If you put the drum kit apart component by component by using close mics, you will have to work even harder putting it all back together so it sounds like one instrument again. However, for overheads, the KSM109 is superior to the NT5. A/B'd just the other day.

[magno]

As far as cheap drum mic pack go if the pg kit is the cheapest then go for it, if it's not, then buy whatever cheaper mic kit is available.
Cheap mics are cheap mics.

[rugrat]

Always remember you get what you pay for.

[magno]

Originally Posted by rugrat

Always remember you get what you pay for.

You do, but the difference in quality between a $30 mic and a $50 mic are not going to be great. The difference may be more noticeable when you get in to the >$200 range

[rockyboro]

I disagree in regards to getting what you pay for!
I have $100 condencer mics that I think sound much better than $1,000 condencer mics when used for certain applications.
It all about the sound you are trying to achieve, not the price of the mic.