Internal and External Mics - Kick Drum

[Fox Mulder]

How many of you guys are processing them individually? Sometime back I had a habit of just sticking to EQ-ing them separately and later feeding them to a buss followed by a comp and/or a transient designer.

What I do now is - I use a transient designer for the internal mic, cut out most of the lower mids making it sound a little unnatural. With the external mic I wouldn't use a transient designer. I'd make it pump a bit with a compressor, preserve some of the boxy mids and maybe get rid of excessive lows. Blend the 2 together, feed it to a clipper. Hence I get the attack from the internal mic, and the punch from the external mic.


Edit: Excuse my bad grammar.

 

[Fox Mulder]

Bump?

 

[pikachu69]

I always process them separately. For me the internal mic is only there to capture the beater click so a beta 91, sm57 or MD421 works best. Then something like a D6 or D112 just half in the hole of the front skin for the woof.
A drum tunnel always works well and really helps with spill from the entire kit.

Also, try a 57 on the other side of the batter skin (so 2 external mics, beater side pointing at where the beater hits the skin) if you really only want the click and want to process the 2 mics together. Beware of snare bleed. You will have to flip the phase on this track. I really like the sound this adds to a track, almost like using the trigger 'click' for transient attack. I also found this mic perfect for triggering samples compared to any internal mic.
Cheers.