DRUMMER CAFE

This past weekend I played a gig with 8 bands. one of the bands used congas & bongos. I put an SM81 overhead and it worked great.... So yes, condensor mics work well for them.   

For studio recording, try some Crown CM-700 condensor mics. They are cheaper than the Shure SM-81 and EXCELLENT for percussion! You can sometimes find them on eBay for around $150.

For live work though, I think the CM-700 might be too sensitive and prone to feedback, at least it was when I tried it. Instead, I use a Shure Beta 87a ($100 if you shop around) or a EV N/D967 (maybe $125). The EV's are actually vocal mics, but work well for hand drums and have a huge gain before feedback which is always an issue when playing live. Both the Shure and the EV are supercardioids, which will help with feedback and other instruments bleeding into your drums. I'm not as crazy about the sound of the Audix D series, but they also work well and are nice 'n small.

Soon, I'm going to try some piezoelectric transducers. No mics, no mic stands, no feedback, no leakage, no holes in your drums, no fooling around. And cheap! These are just little ceramic disks that mount to your heads (or nearby) and turn the vibrations into a tiny electrical signal. The signal has to be fed into a very high-impedance input though, at least as high as your mixer's "instrument" input, but ideally into a piezo preamp which has an impedence of say, 3 to 10 million ohms. Around $60 for a single transducer and simple preamp. Has anyone tried this approach? I'm not necessarily recommending Shadow, but they do have some info on piezos here: http://www.shadow-electronics.com/start.html

Bongojimi . . .

Interesting setup!

Do you have any feedback problems with the Audix condensers?

I ask because I tried two different small condenser instruments mics (Crown CM-700, A-T 5100) on a couple of occasions and they fedback so badly that I gave them up in favor of dynamics. Maybe it was the room or other factor.

What's your experience???

I ended up going with audix d2's on conga and quinto. I first put them on boom stands, but found that a little unwieldy, plus the extra stands were just more stuff to haul around. I then did what I wish I had done first which is attach them with lp claws. nice and compact. yes, I sometimes hit the mics with a hand by accident when playing, but it's not a real issue. I usually just plug into the pa system, but having a mixer nearby would be nice, although, again, more gear to schlep. I dont mic the bongos, but maybe I should. they seem to be pretty loud even without. if I add a tumba, which I would like, then im looking at another mic, I suppose. but I dont think I can fit three conga drums into the back of my toyota celica, though two fit in just fine....

I dug out the claws for my gig last night and used dynamic mics again....instead of the audix mics I was playing up two  post earlier.  The really is no comparison to dynamic mics. I left the condenser mic on bongos cause it was so compact and didn't need much extra for them and it worked fine. condenser mics are more prone to "Feed-back"  and the volume and clarity was outstanding with the dynamic set-up.  The shure 267 gave me a bit of local control and I liked  having only one line to board.
your post  Musik got me rethinking and you are right. dynamic are the way to go.