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Posted by: Logan Hornbuckle Tue 24 Oct 2006, 16:48

I am new here, and I was just wondering what would be the best usb microphone for micing a kick drum. I am currently using a Samson usb condenser mic overhead to mic the rest of the drumset. I use garageband and am new to recording. Thanks in advance.

Posted by: lepetitmartien Wed 25 Oct 2006, 16:05

Avoid the samson USB, it seems to give problem (ie not working at all) at all.

I'm going to quote one of our french members Djedjjj:

There seem to be a squad of die hards KM184 followers

Posted by: Logan Hornbuckle Fri 27 Oct 2006, 07:16

so what would be a good mic for micing a kick drum for less than $200?

and doesn't that mean i would have to also get a pre-amp...and which one works the best w/ garageband?

thanks in advance

Posted by: TKO Mon 13 Nov 2006, 12:02

Hello,
There are no suitable usb equipped mics in the market today, so i suggest you invest in an audio interface with a couple of mic inputs and phantom power. That way you can utilise all the mics in the world !
As for bass drum micing,there are of course several options but you might want to check out Sennheiser 602, it´s capsule is rather nicely tuned to enhance bass drum frequencies, the price should be in your ballpark, too...

Posted by: TKO Thu 23 Nov 2006, 09:43

Hi again,
I recommended getting an audio interface, and as there is a bewildering amount of choice, here are a couple of models that might work for you: Tapco Link USB (or firewire) Tapco is a Mackie owned company and while I haven´t tried these I expect the mic preamps to be decent. And they´re cheap (around 150€). Another worth considering is Focusrite Saffire, they have an LE version out now and it´s a classy little box with built in DSP so it takes load off your CPU.
All these only have two mic inputs and while you can get decent results micing just the bass drum and rest of the kit with a single overhead you don´t have too many mixing options. You can of course use an analog mixer for more mic inputs and submix these to the interface´s line inputs, you are stuck with the submix-balance but still have the option of using EQ, compression, reverb & stuff inside your computer.
Hope this was useful, have a good time experimenting!