Every engineer has different methods for recording a drum kit. Some put one mic on the kick. Others use four. Some go for a tight, focused sound, while others fill the room with mics to capture every unique nuance of the ambience. Walk into six different sessions and you’ll see six different approaches, and every one of them works in their own way.
Toontrack has spent years working in those sessions. We’ve recorded drums with the most experienced engineers in the business, including Al Schmitt at Capitol, Eddie Kramer at AIR Studios in London, George Massenburg at Galaxy Studios in Belgium, Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago, Michael Ilbert at Hansa in Berlin and Sylvia Massy at Studio La Fabrique in France – to name a few.
Below are the source videos with in-depth interviews from each of the engineers featured in this article.
Kick
The Neumann U47 FET is the closest thing to a consensus mic. Sylvia Massy, George Massenburg and Michael Ilbert all reach for it as the outside or front-head mic, and Eddie Kramer keeps one in the rotation also. It has very high SPL handling and adds to the weight and tone of the kick.
Where many engineers split is on how many mics they need on the kick.
Al Schmitt was the minimalist. One AKG D12, period. This particular D12 was given to him as a gift – the fourth one ever made – and he didn’t use it on anything but the kick. “Everybody here at Capitol when they hear it loves it,” he says. “They’re trying to borrow it from me.” That’s the whole signal chain.
Kramer is the maximalist. For his Toontrack session he set up a forest of mics in front of the kick: a vintage AKG D12, an AKG D24, an AKG D30 for the period sound, plus a Shure Beta 52 for a more current take, with a Shure SM91 boundary mic inside the drum. Sometimes the SM91 sits outside instead. He wants to try everything he can to provide users with multiple options. The combination provides a vintage and modern option at the same time.
Massenburg sits in the middle with a layered approach: a Sennheiser e902 against the front head for punch and high-frequency content, a U47 FET outside for weight and tone, and a Yamaha SubKick for the low frequencies. Ilbert does a similar thing – U47 FET inside, AKG D112 and an NS-10 wired up as a sub.
Two specialty moves are worth knowing.
In her session, Sylvia Massy ran a Sennheiser MD421 into a PA in the back of the room. She’s not recording that mic – she’s pumping the kick into the space so the room mics get bigger low-end. This is a useful trick to alter the balance in the room channels of a very large room.
Steve Albini built his kick around a Beyer M380, a figure-8 dynamic with extended low-frequency response. The figure-8 pattern gives an exaggerated proximity effect, so the closer you get the more low-end you capture. To balance the woolliness without an EQ, he hung a Crown GLM-100 small condenser near the beater for definition. He also synthesized a separate narrow band of low-frequency energy on its own fader, so he could add weight without touching the original mic channels at all.
If you’re miking a kick for the first time, start where the consensus is: one mic outside (a 47 FET will get you there), but any high-SPL-handling condenser will do the trick. Then add another mic inside the kick pointed at the beater to capture the attack of the drum. From there, the question you should ask is “what’s missing?” Use additional mics, samples, or the Albini trick to add it into the kick sound.
Snare
The Shure SM57 on top is so common across these engineers that it’s almost not worth attributing. Schmitt called it “the old standby.” Massy, Ilbert, Albini and Kramer all reach for it because it just works.
What you add to it is where things get interesting.
The standard pairing is a 57 on top with a small condenser underneath, phase-flipped. Schmitt ran a 57 with an AKG C451 or C452 below. Massy runs a 57 with a Sennheiser MD441 (a good choice to limit bleed from other instruments due to its hypercardioid pattern). Both flip the bottom mic out of phase. Ilbert pairs a 57 with an AKG C451 on top and another 57 underneath.
Kramer takes a different angle. He puts a Neumann KM56 tube condenser well above the snare for a fat tube tone, then blends it with a close 57. Sometimes he swaps the 57 for a Beyer M160 ribbon (warm and direct) or an AKG D19 dynamic with a mid-range spike – the same one he used on Mitch Mitchell. The blend gives him the fatness of the tube and the spike of the dynamic on the same drum. The KM56 has to sit at a distance, he says, or it’ll overload.
Two engineers go their own way entirely. Albini ran an Altec 175 on top, a vintage tube mic. Massenburg goes stereo underneath: two modified Neumann KM84s with a low-gain mod (because it’s loud under there) and an extended frequency response. The result is a snare that still has width even if the ambience channels are turned down.
Toms
Top and bottom on every tom is the default. Massy, Ilbert, Albini and Schmitt all did it. The blend gives you attack from the top and body from the bottom, and you flip the phase on one so they don’t cancel each other out.
However, mic choices split into a few camps.
The vintage white-plastic Sennheiser MD421s are Kramer’s go-to. The newer ones sound fine, he says, but the older ones have a character that fits the period and still hold up on contemporary work. Massy uses a 421 too, on the bottom of the tom for body, paired with a Shure SM98 clip-on on top for the attack.
Clip-ons are the answer if you want to lose the stand clutter. Schmitt used Audio-Technica clip-ons and loved them: they capture the depth, they don’t take up space, and the drummer doesn’t have stands in the way.
The Josephson e22 is a more specific story. David Josephson built it as a tom mic specifically in collaboration with Steve Albini. Albini used the e22 on the larger DW kits and went to AKG C414s for the floor toms there too. Ilbert (inspired by Albini) also used the e22 on every tom, top and bottom. Both mics flat. He doesn’t EQ them.
Massenburg goes a different direction with Ehrlund mics on the top tom skin. They’re sensitive, balanced and linear in the low-end. Add the overheads and the room and “you get a tom from God,” he says. The blend lets you choose punchy, fat, warm or bright in the mix without changing anything at the source.
If you’re starting out, the safe bet is a 421 (or equivalent) on top and either a clip-on or a small condenser underneath. From there it’s about what character you want and what your budget will allow.
Hi-hat
The AKG small-diaphragm condenser family – C451, C452 – is the most common pick. Massy uses the C451 capsule. Schmitt used a C452 and angled it to dodge the wash that comes when the hats close. Ilbert uses the same C451 he runs on the snare top. The angle matters as much as the mic: aim it at the playing area for the open sound, off the bell for thickness.
Where engineers go elsewhere, they go for character. Massenburg uses a Neumann KM84. Kramer prints two mics at once – a Shure KSM141 for fatter low-mids and a wider frequency response, and an AKG C451 for the brighter sound. He picks one in the mix or blends them.
Albini’s disdain for the hi-hat was no secret and he was brutally honest about why he put a mic on the hat at all: people expect to see one. He used a Beyer M160 ribbon. It’s directional and bright but not as piercing as a condenser.
Something to consider: in his description, Ilbert explains that micing a kit is about frequency planning. If the room is splashy, he picks a hat mic that gets the cymbals out of the way of the snare presence. A bright mic on a bright cymbal pushes both up the frequency range, which builds a frequency puzzle around the snare’s attack. The mic you choose isn’t only about what the hat sounds like – it’s about how the hat works with everything else. That’s the key takeaway to all of this: pro engineers know their tools and how to use them to achieve what they want to hear.
Overheads
Two big choices to make: ribbons or condensers, and how wide to spread them.
Ribbons give you a darker character. Coles 4038s show up in three of these sessions (Massy, Kramer and Albini). Tube condensers give you a brighter, and perhaps more detailed picture. Kramer puts up three Neumann U67s, which are exceptionally smooth-sounding mics. Ilbert uses Mojave MA-200s, which he describes as a modern take on a U67 or U87. Schmitt used Audio-Technica AT4050s and said every drummer he tried them on loved what the mics did to the cymbals.
You can also run two flavors at once and pick later. Massy puts up Coles 4038s and an AKG C24 stereo tube mic – ribbons on one side, condensers on the other, very different sounds. Massenburg pairs Sanken cardioid condensers (even off-axis response) with Beyer M201 dynamics (punchy, more rock and roll). The Sanken would be the more refined picture, he says. The Beyers would be the rock-and-roll one. “I don’t understand how it’s so good,” he says of the M201. “It’s just amazing as a drum overhead.”
Width is its own decision. Ilbert keeps his overheads tight. Wide overheads aren’t his style, he says. Albini ran his ribbons over the drummer’s shoulders so the cymbal sound in the mics would mimic what the drummer was hearing while playing. Essentially, you have to decide how wide you want the image of the kit in the overheads and then choose your mic position based on that. Some engineers will also use individual cymbal mics, which will change the overhead philosophy quite a bit.
Rooms
The Neumann M50 and its cousins anchor most of these rooms. Ilbert calls the M50 “probably the best room mic in the world.” Kramer puts Blue Bottle mics with the same M50-style spherical capsule in the back corners for low-end. Massy uses Neumann TLM 50 omnis (a solid-state, transformer-less version of the M50) at the back of the room to catch the reflections off the back wall. Schmitt and Massenburg both use Sanken CO100K omnis at a distance. The CO 100K goes out to 90 kHz, Massenburg notes – flat through 30, 40, 50 kHz – which means at high sample rates you get a detailed picture of the room and a real sense of where each drum is positioned.
Surround setups are common at this level and in Superior Drummer’s range of libraries. Schmitt ran a 9-point surround array at Capitol with the CO 100Ks at distance, Royer R-122s for warmth, a Neumann M149 in a Decca Tree configuration and a pair of Royer R-121s up over the kit. Kramer uses an AKG C24 about six feet in front for a balanced stereo pickup, plus a 5.0 Decca Tree of Schoeps MK21 wide cardioids and a pair of Sennheiser MKH 20s. Massenburg pushed it furthest on the SD3 core: 5.0 surround plus front height plus four channels of rear height, captured at 192 kHz and 32-bit, with cardioid Schoeps CMC 6 (MK4 capsules) for the height and Schoeps shotguns reaching into the back of the room. A total of 11 channels.
Albini placed his Neumann CMV 563 omnis on the floor on either side of the kick, about ten feet out. He did this to simulate a boundary microphone.
Ilbert kept a stereo Royer SF-12 in an adjacent room fed to an old Pye compressor with a built-in delay. Phase isn’t a problem on that one because of the delay – the mic floats in the picture without fighting the close mics for placement.
Specialty mics
This is where engineers stop looking like each other.
Massy gets weird in the most useful way. She wraps a hose around the base of the kit with a microphone taped inside the end. The hose filters out the cymbals and beefs up the rest of the kit – she runs it through a compressor and blends it back in. She also hung a mic inside a bottle of water for a wobbly low-end version of the kick and toms. She bought a modified telephone and a cassette recorder with a mic feed at a local thrift store for dirt and grit. If you want some extra dirt in the sound of your drums, she says, that’s what you use.
Ilbert used a trash mic. It’s an Altec salt shaker positioned at roughly equal distance from the snare, the rack tom and where the kick is hit – a single mono picture of the kit’s attack from one angle.
Kramer’s AKG D19 isn’t strictly a specialty mic, but the way he uses it qualifies. It’s a cheap dynamic with a mid-range spike. Blended with a tube condenser on the snare, it gives you fatness and presence at the same time. The point isn’t the mic – it’s the blend.
Massenburg uses Ehrlund ambient mics with separate front and rear outputs, set to loose cardioid. They give him a centered close picture of the drums plus a controllable amount of room from the rear lobe, on different channels. It’s a way to dial in how much room sneaks in without moving anything.
Where this all ends up
You can hear all of this work in Toontrack libraries.
When Toontrack records a library for Superior Drummer or EZdrummer, we go to the engineer’s studio of choice and capture the kit the way they’d capture it on a record. The mic choices, the placement, the room sound, the philosophy – it’s all the decision of the chosen engineer.
Every engineer in this post recorded for Superior Drummer 3 or EZdrummer 3 on their core libraries or one of their expansions. Massenburg’s immersive session in Belgium became the SD3 core library. Kramer’s vintage U67s and Decca Tree picture at AIR became the Legacy of Rock SDX. Schmitt’s Capitol surround setup became the Decades SDX. Massy’s quirky mics and PA-pumped room at La Fabrique became the Drum Factory SDX. Ilbert’s Hansa setup is in The Rooms of Hansa SDX, and the EZdrummer 3 core library. Albini’s quintessential Electrical Audio sound is the Alt-Rock EZX.
These six are a fraction of the engineers we’ve recorded with. We chose them for this post because their approaches (and the drum sounds they produce) are genuinely distinct from each other. If you want to go deeper, we’ve put together a YouTube playlist with mic walk-through and “Making Of” videos from all of them.
*All other manufacturers’ product names are trademarks of their respective owners, which are in no way associated or affiliated with Toontrack. See full notice here.
In this article, we dive into how EZkeys 2 can serve as a co-writer rather than just a piano plugin. We’ve highlighted five features that keep you moving forward and help you explore grooves, chords and performances so you can focus on writing and finishing more songs, faster.
EZdrummer 3 is tailored for songwriters. Superior Drummer 3 is built for producers and engineers who want complete control over every element of the drum recording. Neither one is better than the other, but one may be the right choice for the way you prefer to work.
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