For The Gear - Heads

My drums on the Bradley Wik & The Charlatans (heretofor known as "BW/C") EP were recorded with the following mic configuration: Shure SM57s close-mic'd on the toms. SM58 close mic'd on the snare. 2 AKG pencil condensers for overheads. And a Sure kick drum mic (SM48?). The overheads run about $1200 for the pair, but other than that the mics are all pretty inexpensive. Pierre Ferguson who produced and engineered the session did an amazing job. He has a few signature techniques for eq-ing the drums in the mix but for the most part they sound on record just like they do in the room. I use Evens 2 ply coated heads on the snare on toms, with Evans single ply clear resonance heads on the bottoms. The heads were brand new and freshly tuned, which is normal for recording. My kit is a vintage 60s Ludwig, which I've had to do almost no work on, the bearing edges are true and the drums are still in great shape. I use Vic Firth 7A nylon tip sticks. I used to use wood tips, but I find the Nylon tips give a better contact sound on the cymbals, especially the ride. Speaking of cymbals, my ride is a vintage Zildjian which I've had longer than the kit. The crash in the left channel (so on my right as I'm playing) is an inexpensive Sabian which was all I could afford 10 years ago but I really like the sound of it. The left channel crash is a newer high end Zildjian, which I borrowed from my roomate. The hats are cheap Zildjian ZBT, which you can buy a whole set of at guitar center for just over $100.
Funny thing about brand names, they don't mean what they used to. Some time in the late 80s or early 90s a lot of companies realized that they could farm out their manufacturing to China, turn out an absolutely inferior product, slap their once prestigious label on it and sell it to kids who only shop for labels. Don't be fooled, if you see a brand new Ludwig kit for $500 or less, it's junk. The real stuff is still thousands. Best to find the vintage gear, back when everything was still made in the USA by craftsman who didn't know how to turn out an inferior product.

Oh and one more thing, this was recorded using Pro Tools. If you don't know what that means, Pro Tools is a software that came out in the late 90s and quickly became the new industry standard for recording. It enables bands to basically digitally fix every mistake in a recording. There is a lot of controversy emerging in regards to how much is too much fixing. As a band, we pride ourselves on being musicians, thus we have no use for Autotune, Beat Detective, etc... If we get a take that is near perfect except for one beat where my sticks clicked together and I missed the snare drum, we go back and "fix" it. Sure, we could record the whole song over again, but then something else might go wrong and this fix literally takes seconds- studio time isn't cheap! But I am proud to say that no Beat Detective was used. Beat Detective is a plugin for Pro Tools that allows you to input the temp (bpm) and time signature of the song and it will allign all of the drum beats so there are no notes out of place. I would bet that 90% of the music you hear on the radio today has been run through Beat Detective. This record was made without even the use of a click track (metronome played during tracking to keep everyone in tempo) which I'm sure someone with perfect rhythm could tell. But you know what, it makes for a more organic record and rock & roll isn't supposed to be perfect.