Today I’m going to review a little microphone kit I picked up a year or so ago. There are some really big pros, and some unavoidable flaws. Read on to see if this kit will meet your need.
When I was just beginning to gather equipment to get my recording studio off the ground I immediately looked for drum mics. Recording the drums is tough; getting a nice clean sound from ALL of the pieces without sacrificing the natural tone of the kit is difficult to say the least. I needed to get some quality drum microphones to help with my work; however, I wason a budget. After much searching I found the CAD 4 drum mic kit. Lets start with the pros…
This pack is affordable. I paid $80 after tax for these four mics. I looked at many others and the price went up significantly with other kits. And for the quality of the mics, it is a really decent price tag. The other really big benefit to these microphones is that you only need a stand for the bass mic. The other microphones clip onto the rim of the desired drum shell you want to place it on.
As far as quality, the snare mic has a really good frequency range to bring out the best in your snare. The two mid microphones (for your toms) are decent at picking up the mids in your drums and adding a little extra filler to the tone. Which leaves just the bass drum mic, and leads into the one unavoidable flaw of this kit.
The bass drum mic simply doesn’t cut it. Every time I record, I have to do major work on the bass end alone. The rest of the kit is relatively easy to mix (I’m pretty OCD when it comes to getting the sound I want when I record, not when I mix), but this one mic has caused many a headache. The mic can easily go between sounding like a heartbeat (not in a good way) and sounding like your kicking a box. It just doesn’t meet the standard the rest of the microphones set.
Overall, this kit is excellent if you have a quality room mic or different bass drum mic. Great price, pretty decent quality for the beginner sound engineer, and easy set up/tear down. But the bass drum is fairly low quality. For a sample of the drums, you can visit my SoundCloud account and listen to the song “Unite” (which was created after many hours of mixing the drums alone).
Rating – 3.75 out of 5
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