Hello,

I've been bouncing back and forth trying to figure out the best mics for my situation for quite some time. Basically I'm looking for:

1. A set of stereo overhead mics to be able to get a nice, clear and pleasant stereo image of my kit.
2. Something with a cardioid pattern and pretty decent focus as my drum room has low ceilings.
3. The sound I'm looking for is somewhere between vintage and modern. It's mostly being used for vintage psych rock, jazz, afrobeat type of sounds. Nothing all modern and hi-fi, but I'm not trying to sound like a 60s record either.. clarity and high end being available would be nice, but I like a full frequency response so I have tone shaping abilities on tap.

The mics I'm considering are:

Beyerdynamic M160
Soyuz 013
AKG C451b
Neumann KM184

The mics I have so far are:

Cloud 44A stereo set (these are amazing but my stupid low ceilings makes it nearly impossible to get a great overhead sound with them... awesome room mics though and my fave mics in my mic locker.)
Royer R122 (only 1, great but again... with low ceilings it's a bummer)
EV RE-20 (I use for kick)
Sennheiser 421 (I use on snare mainly)
Sennheiser 441 (other than snare I've not tried it on drums yet)
Violet Vintage Amethyst
Blue Bluebird
AKG C214
Shure SM57 & SM58


What are your thoughts? I know they all have their own sounds, but what about for my application and restrictions? Performance for low ceilings, isolation/focus of the mic, full frequency response etc?

in a room with poor acoustics, i'd probably use a single overhead mic (pattern depending on size/width of the kit), a pair 'underheads' or then just a 'knee mic'.

i'd avoid any soyuz and those akg mics - i like the ck61 and ck63 capsules though but mostly use schoeps, often in m/s or then a modified gj/equidistant l/c/r (+ kick) setup...

Regarding the sound you are looking for the Oktava MK 012 might be a good option.

Yeah the room is an open 12 x 10 room and it's treated for very little reflection at the moment, but the ceilings are typical basement ceiling heights, around 8 feet. Getting any figure 8 up there just sounds gnarly to me.

Thing is mono won't give me that stereo field. I was thinking possibly a M160 XY. M160 seems like a legit option for mono OH too.

Why exactly do you say to avoid the Soyuz & AKG?

I use Beyer M160s and Soyuz 013 TUBEs as my XY overheads at my place. Either will work well for the genres you described, but I’d have to give the 160s a SLIGHT edge since they’re more forgiving of acoustics.

I did come across those and heard of them but have been meaning to look into them a bit more. They seem nice and affordable. I noticed a lot of people used to "mod" them, but don't know enough about any of that now.

CAD M179 for large diaphragm, Oktava MK-012 for small diaphragm.

Or a used C414 XLS for large diaphragm. I think even the CAD M179 would he a huge improvement over the C214.

I have been leaning towards the 160s :D

The 160 is also EXCELLENT as a mono “underhead”/crotch mic for lo-fi/krautrock/psych vibes!

That’s all I used on this song:

That's really cool! Crazy what a single mono can capture. I do love the sound of the 160!

Going to check out the Octava 012 that people are recommending too. That price is too good to not give it some consideration.

I used to have a small drum room with low ceilings for a long time in the late 90s/early 2000s. I actually got great results.
The ceiling had 705 absorption. I loved the sound of my Neumann KM84s in that room. They were tight and focused and not bright.
If vintage isn't your thing, I like Schoeps in general for a very natural small diaphragm sound. Also, not vintage or small diaphragm, but a pair of used 414 BULS will do a nice job here, they are mellow and have various patterns to keep it focused if needed.

Thanks for that! I think some kind of absorption on the ceiling would greatly improve things for sure. I did look into 414's as well.

I know this is completely outside of what I brought up in this thread, but I'm going to test out some more mono overheads and see how things go.. I have a Lauten Atlantis on the way (was looking for a vocal mic for a long time) and I'm really curious to hear how this might workout as a mono OH. Most likely the stereo solution will be something I'm feeling out for a while.. I definitely do want to try a stereo pair of M160's eventually.

I really like MC012 on overheads and use them more than anything else I have.

You should also build a simple inexpensive cloud for over the drum and "eliminate" the low ceiling.

If the ceiling is actually joists and the upstairs subfloor, I'd hang an 8X8 2-sheet cloud of something dense (plywood/mdf) and use it as a barrier to turn a couple of omnis into boundary mics. Attach them directly to the boundary.

Late addition -- OP mentioned the possibility of a mono overhead, and that's my usual default. In this case a single omni overhead strapped directly to the center of a 4'X4' barrier (your basic Home Depot "handy panel") about 7 feet up would probably do the trick.

No real need to mod them anymore, they changed some of the internals quite some time ago and now they already come kind of modded.
They are really old, developed in the UdSSR with the help of some East German Neumann (now Mikrotech Gefell) engineers.

Any idea when they changed the internals or if there is some way to tell if I have one of the newer ones with "mods" already baked in?

Might there be some point when you ask: Do I really need overheads for my kit in this room?

Or might moving the kit to improve specific issues open up possibilities?


Just wondering about outside the box,

Ray H.

Worth mentioning that I did a mono overhead shootout at my studio recently with a half-dozen engineers present and the Lauten Atlantis was the crowd favorite by a pretty significant margin, so while I always go for the Beyer 160s or Soyuz 013Ts when I’m doing stereo, the Atlantis is still my top pick for single-point, balanced, full-kit pickup as an overhead.

No sorry, I bought them 4 years ago and at that time i gathered this infos.
Since I bought them new I did not dig deeper.

you can get a stereo soundfield from panning the mono signals of the close mics - two overheads in a bad sounding room however will get you too much unwanted sound...

you could use m/s overhead (the fig8 is pointing to the sides) and use just a little of the side signals - way more flexible than x/y but it's possibly better to use a spaced pair of 'underheads' (as suggested previously) in terms of avoiding some of the poor aspects of the room sound; you could even use a spaced pair of pzm's...

...but in terms of localisation, any spaced pair is less than ideal/worse than any coincident technique.

soyuz: tend to distort at relatively low levels and those i was forced to use varied a lot regarding frequency response and self noise.

c451: crazy hf emphasis, not needed in the days of digital anymore; also too much self noise compared to more modern designs - the ck61/c480b imo is a far better mic.

Yeah I like the way you think haha.

Infact, I've been getting messages elsewhere suggesting this. Lots of proponents for a mono OH and/or mic out front. I was chatting with some people last night and it gave me a lot of ideas so, this morning here's what I tried..

Cloud 44A about 3 feet from the kit, centered and slightly angled downwards towards snare.

Royer R122 above the kit (quite low) with it's axis rejecting the snare/bass. I thought of using this basically just to pickup higher definition of the cymbals that the Cloud wouldn't pick up.

Sennheiser 441 on snare.

RE-20 on kick.


Honestly I was able to get a REALLY good sound this way. Not exactly the stereo image I had in mind, but a really really good clear representation of the kit. Tons of options because of the full frequency capture of the ribbon mics. I played around with some UAD Unison Pre's and was able to get some really sweet sounds.

So after all that, I think I'm learning my lesson that I don't necessary "need" anything more to get a great sound... just need to experiment and learn to use what I already have :D

That being said I like to change my sound for different projects.. at some point I'll experiment with more stuff, but I'm really happy I started toying around with the advice I've been receiving. Great results today.

I keep hearing this about it! I'm really excited to try it out as a mono OH. Equally if not more excited to try it out on vocals. Just hope it's a good match for my voice, but from what I heard of male vocal demos it seems up my alley. No way of knowing until I try!

Update.

I purchased a Lauten Atlantis and am looking forward to trying it in Mono OH’s.

Also purchased a pair of Austrian Audio OC818’s and am very excited to try these out as a stereo setup. I looked into them extensively over the past few days and I hope they live up to the “desert island” mic status that some are claiming.

Time to sell off some other mics now!

Curious how you fared in your journey. Any updates?