David Floegel
Silver Member
Hello guys,
so, I decided to build another DIY subkick microphone and a few people requested me to document my work.
Principle:
Well, there's not much to say about the principle of a subkick microphone.
It's basically the same as a dynamic microphone which works with electromagnetic induction.
You've got a membran that starts to swing due to the pressure of the acoustic pressure of (in our case) a bassdrum hit. For those who are not familiar with electromagnetic induction, here's a nice wikipedia article.
My work
Why did I actually want to build a "subkick" microphone? Well, there are 2 reasons:
-1- I'm a tinkerer and love to figure out how things work and if it's possible to build them myself to see if it's either much less expensive and/or the result might be even better than the original (if there is one)
-2- I love a big, fat kick drum sound! I sometimes did a trick in my DAW that I will describe in the next chapter.
Digital alternative
Sometimes when I thought the bassdrum sounded too thin I created an aux-bus which had 2 plugins on it:
-1- an oscillator
-2- a gate
The oscillator generated a sine-wave at around 50 - 70 hz, which is really low. The gate was sidechained with the bassdrum channel (where the actual hit is).
So everytime a peak is on the real bassdrum channel, the gate is triggered.
I would start by setting the gate, so that it won't let the oscillators low sub sound through. When the bassdrum triggers the gate, it releases and adds the sine-wave to the original bassdrum.
The result was pretty ok for some kind of music but it lacks of dynamik. It always had the same volume of course and also it doesn't really fit with the "real bassdrum" in sustain etc.
It sounds "artificial". And that is something I don't like.
So, to add a low frequency to your bassdrum there are 2 commonly used methods:
-1- a filtered large diaphragm micrphone in front of the bassdrum. You've got to make sure you get the distance between the reso head and the microphone to get highest peak of the amplitude to get a full sound.
-2- a subkick microphone ....
A subkick microphone
There is a subkick microphone available on the market, the Yamaha Subkick microphone - which costs 399€ in Germany.
This is a lot of money and I (and many other people before me) thought:
Why not building one myself?
So i did that, too
My subkick microphone
Components
I bought:
- an 8" bass-speaker on ebay: 8€
- a 10"x6" millenium tom tom on ebay: 18€ (it was so cheap, it doesn't even have a bearing edge)
- a neutrik xlr panel jack: 5€
Makes: 31€ in total.
Optics
People who know me might know that I really look for optics, I'm a little perfectionist.
So I thought that the shell looks kinda crappy with it's black wrap on it. Since I had some veneer (birdseye) left from my Sonor Force 2001 restauration I took a piece of it and wrapped it around the shell:
I also have some red stain left and I will try to get a little burst from red to natural on the shell. This should give a nice effect
Later I'm going to seal the shell with some clear-laquer.
To be continued....
I haven't got so far yet as I started yesterday evening veneering the shell but later today I'm going to colorize the shell so pics will follow
Hope you'll like my thread!
If you have any questions, feel free to message me.
I'm also willing to build you your custom subkick, haha
All the best
David
so, I decided to build another DIY subkick microphone and a few people requested me to document my work.
Principle:
Well, there's not much to say about the principle of a subkick microphone.
It's basically the same as a dynamic microphone which works with electromagnetic induction.
You've got a membran that starts to swing due to the pressure of the acoustic pressure of (in our case) a bassdrum hit. For those who are not familiar with electromagnetic induction, here's a nice wikipedia article.
My work
Why did I actually want to build a "subkick" microphone? Well, there are 2 reasons:
-1- I'm a tinkerer and love to figure out how things work and if it's possible to build them myself to see if it's either much less expensive and/or the result might be even better than the original (if there is one)
-2- I love a big, fat kick drum sound! I sometimes did a trick in my DAW that I will describe in the next chapter.
Digital alternative
Sometimes when I thought the bassdrum sounded too thin I created an aux-bus which had 2 plugins on it:
-1- an oscillator
-2- a gate
The oscillator generated a sine-wave at around 50 - 70 hz, which is really low. The gate was sidechained with the bassdrum channel (where the actual hit is).
So everytime a peak is on the real bassdrum channel, the gate is triggered.
I would start by setting the gate, so that it won't let the oscillators low sub sound through. When the bassdrum triggers the gate, it releases and adds the sine-wave to the original bassdrum.
The result was pretty ok for some kind of music but it lacks of dynamik. It always had the same volume of course and also it doesn't really fit with the "real bassdrum" in sustain etc.
It sounds "artificial". And that is something I don't like.
So, to add a low frequency to your bassdrum there are 2 commonly used methods:
-1- a filtered large diaphragm micrphone in front of the bassdrum. You've got to make sure you get the distance between the reso head and the microphone to get highest peak of the amplitude to get a full sound.
-2- a subkick microphone ....
A subkick microphone
There is a subkick microphone available on the market, the Yamaha Subkick microphone - which costs 399€ in Germany.
This is a lot of money and I (and many other people before me) thought:
Why not building one myself?
So i did that, too
My subkick microphone
Components
I bought:
- an 8" bass-speaker on ebay: 8€
- a 10"x6" millenium tom tom on ebay: 18€ (it was so cheap, it doesn't even have a bearing edge)
- a neutrik xlr panel jack: 5€
Makes: 31€ in total.
Optics
People who know me might know that I really look for optics, I'm a little perfectionist.
So I thought that the shell looks kinda crappy with it's black wrap on it. Since I had some veneer (birdseye) left from my Sonor Force 2001 restauration I took a piece of it and wrapped it around the shell:
I also have some red stain left and I will try to get a little burst from red to natural on the shell. This should give a nice effect
Later I'm going to seal the shell with some clear-laquer.
To be continued....
I haven't got so far yet as I started yesterday evening veneering the shell but later today I'm going to colorize the shell so pics will follow
Hope you'll like my thread!
If you have any questions, feel free to message me.
I'm also willing to build you your custom subkick, haha
All the best
David