Floor Tom Mic Placement

Toms and room view larger image note.

Floor tom mic placement. August 31 2020 the best microphone for recording tom toms for most people is the sennheiser e604. The tom toms sound best when using a dynamic mic. Frankly their e604 is just about as high quality as it comes for tom mics and deserve to be recommended as the best microphone for toms and even for snares as well. Not only does this offer most of the features of the other products mentioned ruggedness ease of use and the ability to take a beating the sound quality is truly exceptional.

If you use two mics place one above each drum about 1 to 3 inches above the head. Internal miking system available in both a direct permanent drill mount or via a removable non drill avc audio vent connector mount that utilize the existing vent hole both may miking systems provide added isolation for those who want to control their sound. Like so many others i like the u87 on floor toms. Or you could get radical and place the mic under the drum throne perhaps slightly towards the floor tom.

Experiment with placement by moving the mic over the front rim of the snare drum moving it more to the right side of the drum or over the drummers knee. One thing i learned from michael stavrou s book mixing with your mind about recording drums in general is to find the best placement for the set in a room by walking around banging on the floor tom until you find the most resonant spot easier to do with two people one to bang and one to listen then placing the floor. They are flexible enough to work in both live and studio applications. When placing drum mics it s important to remember that sticks and hands and cymbals will be falling very hard near them so make sure your mics aren t in the way of the player or a rogue ride cymbal.

Where the re20 truly shines. The e604s have clips which enable one to affix them directly to the rim of the drum. As a result of a pleasing bass proximity effect it can also be used to great effect as a floor tom mic although mic placement is crucial as bleed can become an issue. For the mounted toms the ones above the kick drum you can use one or two mics.

But i am testing five mics that can be used on floor toms and i ve tried to make it as useful as possible. Since these are not exact placements so you ll need to find what works for the kit the player and the goals of the session. If you use one mic place it between the two drums about 4 to 6 inches away from the heads figure 3 shows this placement option. Placed tight on the shells.

Ok so to be open with you i m not necessarily finding out the best floor tom microphone. You could take the front facing position and push the mic right up between the kick and snare. This placement offers a different kind of natural representation of the kit this time favoring the kick over the snare. For me at least is vocals.