Floor Tom Miking

The 604 s are great tom mics.

Floor tom miking.

Miking a tom with one microphone is preferable as it has more clarity than miking with two mics having one on the bottom. Common tom mics are the trusty shure sm 57 or a. It has five toms 8 10 and 12 tom toms and 14 and 16 floor toms. In addition to the tom sizes already mentioned there is also a 13 rack tom and an 18 floor tom.

Otherwise use a kick drum mic. For jazz it is common not to use toms at all and only get the drum sound balance with accurately placed overhead mics and maybe a bass drum and snare drum mic whereas as pop and rock drum sound requires a closer miking technique to achieve very isolated tom signals to process individually. If using a top and bottom mic make sure to check polarity. If you have more than one floor tom you can place one mic between them or mic them individually.

Miking the mounted tom toms with one mic. This section covers drum miking for both rack and floor toms. You can also get o rings or various muffling devices to reduce over ring if that is an issue for you. Even on floor tom.

The quality of the drum heads and how they are tuned will greatly affect the way your toms sound. Floor toms are miked the same way as the mounted tom toms. It works well in many different styles of music including pop acoustic rock contemporary jazz latin and funk. Place a single mic a couple of inches away from the head near the rim.

Stay clear of beta 98 s on the bigger toms. Often i don t get what the rider stipulates for the floor and because i list 604 s as an option for the rack toms i arrive and find there are 604 s on all the toms. With a well tuned drum you can t go wrong. Both heads on the drum can usually be tuned to produce a more powerful and large sound than if you were to tune one head alone.