Hide The Silver
By
Jack Alexander
Mumbo-jumbo and perfect solutions
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This might be a good time to start
a folder labeled “BS Detector.” Real engineers (look
at your feet – if you aren’t wearing athletic shoes,
you are probably part of the problem) spend a fair amount of time
fending off the advances of people with solutions, often known as
sales and marketing types. |
“Our product was out on that (insert adjective,‘huge’
preferred) tour with (insert name of aging over-hyped rock band that definitely
needs to go home and sit by the fire).” Yeah, right. You guys gave
that one away and everyone knows it.
“Our speaker product requires no equalization by the user –
all necessary adjustments have been made in the controller.” Uh-huh,
with everyone locked out so no one could see the massive futzing done
to cover up the anomalies of the cheap drivers and minimize the comb filtering
due to the half-assed arrangement of the mid-devices.
“These amplifiers have had only one incidence of failure, just ask
(insert name of sound company owner with strong ties to manufacturer)".
Oh really. Then it was someone else’s amplifiers that were replaced
in that big system with the big amps from your main competitor.
The next entry in your folder will be titled “The Perfect Solution,”
as in, “This is the perfect kick drum microphone.” In normal
use, we have bass drums running from 16-inch-head jazz types to rock monsters
with 26-inch heads. There are huge variances in the configuration of these
drums; some are double headed with no hole, some have no front head, some
have half a front head, some have a front head with a hole. Damping with
Sonex varies in bass drums from none to full.
Also, the same 22-inch Sonor or DW bass drum can be set up in many ways,
depending on musical form – rattling with a beater click and minimized
lows for reggae or the muted beater sound with heads tuned to 35 to 40
Hz for that big-ass rock sound.
And you think that piece of junk they’re flogging will answer all
these questions? Next time tell the marketing geniuses that you might
just stick with a reasonable complement of bass drum mics that get used
based upon sound (you remember sound, don’t you?) requirements.
How about a Shure SM57 on a stand at a 45-degree angle, eight inches from
the front head of a double-headed jazz 16- inch kick for that big band
sound? And for a 20-inch to 24-inch rock kick drum that’s poorly
tuned and under damped, with a hole in the front head or no front head
at all, I’ll use a Sennheiser 421 without a stand, laid down in
the drum and aimed at the floor tom.
For a well-tuned rock kick with a hole in the front head, or with the
head off, try a Beyer M88 (no stand) aimed at the audience on the downstage
edge of the drum. This is combined with a 421 (no stand), one click down
from “M” and aimed at the beater, and an EV RE20 (on a stand)
on back of the kick, to the right of pedal, out of phase. If you need
that tight, tailored sound with a narrow “Q” low-end, consider
a Sennheiser 441 laid down at the downstage edge of the kick, aimed to
the snare side of the beater.
There’s more, but if I want to be trendy with the “perfect
kick drum mic,” I’ll just get a bucket of aqua paint and smear
some on my kick mic collection so they can look cool, just like that one-note
boat anchor you’re trying to unload.
Gotta go. My folder is full.
Jack Alexander’s long list of vices include high-end tweakoid
speakers, British mixing consoles and exotic mic pre-amps. We won’t
talk about the rest… Jack can be reached at jalexander@colum.edu.