PROWORKSHOP RECORDING DRUM SET

Welcome to Drum Recording Bliss

DW Performance Series toms and kick drum in Ebony oil stain

We've owned drums for years. The Anton Fig Yamaha custom snare has been in inventory since 2004. In 2012 we began to acquire the DW components, first the Kick drum, then the 18" floor tom. Mary lived about 20 minutes from the DW drum factory in Oxnard but we never made the journey there to see the source of our drums.

It was an interesting set of circumstances that led us to the DW brand of components. After owning  a little bit of everything in the last 40 years, we decided to start with a clean slate and the search led straight to Drum Workshop, where American innovation and tone collide head-on.

It's easy to get caught up in all the voodoo of drum construction but in the end the Performance Series of DW drums is the basis of the Proworkshop drum kit. Our research led us to believe in the thin 8-ply maple HVX shell design to achieve a serious bright and resonant tone, we bought a drum and evaluated it extensively before buying the next component.

One by one we slowly acquired every model in this series except for the 16" floor tom (we'd buy it but we've got no room for it). All of our drums were made entirely in America, in Oxnard California, they are labeled inside each drum. They are as beautiful to look at as they are sonically to listen to, no silly plastic coatings or wraps, these are finished in ebony stain over the 8-ply maple shells, coated in a furniture grade finish, gorgeous.

Some drummers who've recorded here have commented about how difficult our drum set would be to move, they're always amazed when we respond "It never moves, it's here to stay, it was built for here".

The kit currently has 8", 10", 12" and 13" mounted toms.

The floor toms are 14" and 18".

The six toms are turned in Major-third musical intervals, the notes in our set correspond to
8" = G
10" = D#
12" = B
13" = G
14" = D#
18" = B

To get this tuning accurate and spot-on we use the Tune-Bot drum tuner for repeatability and great tone. Here is a LINK to more information about the Tune-Bot.

Our DW Kick is a 24" maple drum with full heads on both sides, there is no hole in the resonant head and no internal microphone, it does not need it. If you want a dry tight little cardboard box sound or a dull thud for a kick drum tone, we can do that too but we give you the option of having the worlds best BIG acoustic kick drum tone, it works for metal or a slow country ballad, good tone is good tone. Our kick-drum microphone is a customized large-diaphragm vacuum-tube condenser model wired with Mogami cable, it captures massive bass tone and has boosted high's to add presence and attack.

And maybe the best part is, you don't have to do anything to use this drum set except come here and record or hire one of our outstanding local studio performers to play across the internet on your original song. It's all set up and ready to go at a moments notice.

The Hi Hat stand is by Yamaha. The hi hat cymbals are a vintage Zildjian Quick Beat 14" set, they sound like classic rock and sit in a mix like they have on countless hit records for over 40 years.

We have multiple kick drum pedals, two DW 5000, a PDP double bass pedal, a Pearl spring driven kick pedal (slower response) and a PDP single kick pedal (also slower response than DW5000). Lately everyone is using the PDP double kick drum pedal and acting happy, that makes us happy too.

The throne is a hydraulic by Roc Soc. It is very easy to adjust the height and this throne holds it's settings quite well. It's the tractor style seat but it's very thickly padded and never feels uncomfortable once you've got the height set correctly (which is extremely easy to do).

The two-story Gibraltar rack system provides lots of mounting options for getting all the components adjusted just right. The rack system allows every component to be carefully positioned and mounted for easy access from the playing position. Some drummers are intimidated by our kit, we say "you don't have to hit them all".

Everywhere you want a cool sounding cymbal, there's already one there and they're optimized for the stereo field of the overhead microphones. If you can play, this kit will make you sound ginormous!

Pintech mesh-head digital drums can be assigned to Timbales, Congas or variety of percussion samples

Those brown bats along the back wall are three-inch Roxul rock wool wrapped in acoustically transparent grille cloth

The mesh-head toms are not light weight and require a solid mounting. The Gibraltar rack system is very sturdy and provides one of the best solutions for mounting this much stuff in such a small area.

The drum mounts for the digital drums are also by Gibraltar. We love the variety of sizes Gibraltar offers and the quality is as good as the most expensive hardware available. The mounting clamps and all the hardware is top notch and has provided proven performance in our studio setup since 2012.

It's easy to see the three-inch Roxul sound control bats behind the drum throne. Acoustic treatment is necessary in the drum area.

All of the cymbal stands are clamped to the Gibraltar frame. This allows them to be quickly repositioned to meet the needs of whomever is playing the drums.

ROOM ACOUSTIC TREATMENT
The drum recording space has been an ongoing experiment and continuous development process. You don't want the space to be too dead or it sucks brilliance out of the percussion tone. At the same time we don't want a bunch of spurious echo and bass build up from acoustic-coupling to the building.

Our drum room employs multiple sonic treatments in order to create an environment that is super friendly for creating fat drum tones that speak authoritatively. The Roxul rock wool is a critical part of controlling the sound on a full-range basis.

The combination of the Roxul acoustic treatment combined with the complete removal of mechanical noise from the microphones provides a beautiful articulate drum sound that works in any style of music, because killer sounding drums, sound killer on anything.

Directly in front of the drum set is a pair of Bose 802 speakers and a 40" LED TV which can display the tracks from the DAW recording system. This enables whomever is recording with the drum set to see the song and play along with it. 

The speakers and the TV are mounted to a massive diaphragmatic resonator which reduces coupling between the acoustic drum output and the building. This piece took four days to construct but the addition to the acoustics of the room were so worth it. The full inner wall is only anchored at two points which means it is barely attached to the building. This greatly reduces energy from the drums being transmitted into the building structure which means less ugly resonance in the recording space. 

The Proworkshop drum set is a constantly evolving beast. Our collections of cymbals and acoustic based percussion toys is always growing. We also have multiple sample playback options which means you can have just about any sound imaginable on one of the pads. We create these sounds on our main computer and then transfer them to the drum sample players using SD style memory cards. 

Every piece of equipment in our drum room is there for one reason, to record interesting sounds. We're not beholden to endorsements or promotional reasons for having any particular brand or model of anything here. Each was chosen because it delivers a delicious sonic treat, all the Mojo, none of the Voodoo. 

WHY BUILD YOUR OWN DRUM MICROPHONES?

Hot-Rodded MXL 2001, modded with custom electronics and capsule from microphone-parts.com

If you have no experience building microphones it seems like an extreme thing to build your own. Doesn't Sennheiser or Shure know what's best? The MD-421 dynamic microphone by Sennheiser has been a regular in the studio for years, why not use that?

Why would you use something when you know there is something better?

CLOSE UP OF CUSTOM BUILT HIGH TOM-TOM LDC CONDENSER MICROPHONE

LDC CONDENSER MICROPHONE ON HIGH TOM-TOMS

A large diaphragm condenser microphone actually offers a fantastic platform for picking up the acoustic output from drums. When the microphone electrical characteristics are not overdriven the construction of this type of microphone allows for a controlled pickup area and a beautiful full and natural sound. Face it, you don't plant your ear drum right next to tom-toms, it would overload and sound horrible from that vantage point. So the electronics that support the microphone diaphragm need to be precisely matched to the capsule or eardrum of the microphone, this is what allows the Proworkshop microphones to deliver the huge, larger than life sonics.

COINCIDENT PAIR OF CUSTOM BUILT OVERHEAD LDC MICROPHONES

ANOTHER VIEW OF CUSTOM BUILT COINCIDENT PAIR OF LDC OVERHEAD MICROPHONES

Up above the drummer is another bit of Proworkshop engineering magic, it's another pair of MXL microphone bodies only this pair is outfitted with very special diaphragms and circuit boards, these are vintage AKG-414 clones in disguise. Each is fitted with an edge terminated capsule, a NOS FET was individually biased for optimum performance in each mic. The outputs are custom high-nickel transformers. These are configured for cardioid pickup and they're placed in a coincident pair, directly above the snare drum.

CUSTOM BUILT LDC ON 12" AND 13" MOUNTED TOMS

RK-12 capsules combined with custom electronics from Mic-parts.com have given us a coincident pair of overhead microphones with extraordinary performance. Instead of the original exaggerated high frequency sound this pair of mic's provided when new, they now have a very delicious sweet high-frequency timbre and excellent dynamic reach in the drum room. This pair of microphones provides a wonderful phase-correct stereo print of the drum sound. They're shock mounted and fly on an Ultimate Support studio boom so everything is out of the way of the performer.

CUSTOM BUILT LDC MICROPHONE BETWEEN THE TWO FLOOR TOMS

When it comes to placing the microphones around the drum set, this has been a labor of love and the focus of countless hours of recording and testing with the drums.

Less microphones = more sonic quality........ what?

We have plenty of microphones to experiment with and the end result of all that experimenting is using fewer microphones, correctly placed for optimum sound pickup, provides overall better tone than using more microphones. Phase cancellation is a problem whenever a lot of microphones are in-play in a relatively small physical area. Large diaphragm condenser microphones are perfectly suited to the task of detecting the sonic output of pairs of drums. Their frequency response remains uniform as you move off axis so any sound entering from the rear of the mic won't be mangled by poor off-axis performance. (Hint, try talking into the back of a Sennhesier 421 and see if it sounds good).

In the Proworkshop drum room, we mount a single LDC microphone between each pair of tom-toms, this means three microphones cover the six tom-toms. Phase cancellation is absolutely minimized by the spacing and each tom speaks with authority and definition. Combined with our low mass mini-Mogami microphone cords, our drum microphones are a treat for your ears.

SHOCK MOUNTING
The entire drum set rides on top of multiple layers of cross-laid plywood which is floated and isolated from the concrete floor below. This reduces the amount of noise that is induced into the physical building around the drum area and reduces unwanted bass-frequency resonances.

SHOCK MOUNTED BEYER MIC UNDER SNARE

SHOCK MOUNTED AUDIO TECHNICA CONDENSER ON TOP OF SNARE

Every individual microphone in our drum set is mounted on an isolating shock mount to minimize mechanically induced noise from entering the microphone. The isolation mounts reduce intermodulation frequency distortion in the microphones so the sound is just what the diaphragm hears with no physical noise added.

FLOOR TOM MIC SHOCK MOUNT

MOUNTED TOM 1 & 2 MIC SHOCK MOUNT

MOUNTED TOM 3 & 4 MIC SHOCK MOUNT

In addition to the shock mounts for isolation we've implemented low-mass mini-Mogami microphone cables.

STANDARD SIZE MIC CABLES ON LEFT, MINI MOGAMI MIC CABLES ON RIGHT

These innovative and unique cables are super thin and light-weight. They further isolate the microphone from mechanically-induced noise that can get into the mic by physically riding up the microphone cable and eventually vibrating the microphone. Mini-Mogami microphone cables are so small, light weight and most importantly low-mass, they just can't support the physical-transmission of noise when hanging in the limp state from the back of the microphone. This further eliminates intermodulation distortion and provides more clear reproduction of just what the mic diaphragm hears.

SHOCK MOUNTED MIC UNDER LEFT RIDE CYMBAL

SHOCK MOUNTED MIC UNDER RIGHT RIDE CYMBAL

Mini-Mogami microphone cables are unique and an original design here in the Proworkshop lab, purposely built to answer a need, remove all mechanical noise and just record the most pure drum sounds possible.

SHOCK MOUNTED KICK MIC, NOTE WOOD BLOCKS THAT PREVENT KICK DRUM FROM CREEPING ON FLOATING FLOOR

For years recording engineers have used high-pass filters to remove the low rumble on drum microphones. You'll often hear some talk about how it improves the articulation by getting rid of those unnecessary low frequencies. Our response to this marketing is HOGWASH!

A 100 hz high-pass filter would cut off the root tone of our 18" floor tom. An inexperienced engineer would then reach for some bass boosting EQ to fatten the drum sound up and suddenly you've got mangled up tone.

We focused on getting rid of all the mechanical noise before the sound is recorded, this allows the microphones to record (with no high pass filters required) the full fundamental frequency of the lowest drums. Each instrument speaks with authority and sings like the original DW drum designer intended.

DRUM HEADS
We did not start using Evans heads because of any marketing hype. We started slowly, first focusing on the snare drum. Evans Genera snare heads have a character that we did not get from any other and we keep using them, set after set because the recorded tone just works.

The hi-Toms are outfitted with the original DW Remo heads they came with. We tried the black heads and those killed the brilliance these small toms deliver. They sing the best with the stock heads on them (tuned correctly).

The Evans Onyx heads were first implemented on our floor toms to control sustain and resonance. These heads also sing well on the 12" and 13" rack toms. The resonator heads on these are stock DW Remo, we tried some alternatives we had on hand and the stock ones sounded the best.

The 18" floor tom is a beast, it's got the sound and punch of a kick drum. We're using the least resonant tuning (82 Hz top/ 137 Hz bottom) and a new Evans special resonant-head that features a control-ring to limit sustain. The result is a drum sound that does not become obtrusive but speaks powerfully when called on.

We're taking drum recording to the highest level and you can experience it in two different ways. You can come here and record on our drum set or you can have one of our drummers play drums for you and we'll transfer the files across the internet. Either way, you can experience the tonal magic we've built in the Proworkshop recording studio.

Come record drums with us, see, hear and experience great sounding drums.

FOOTNOTE
Why 14" and 18" floor toms? Where's the 16" tom?

That's a good question if you look at drums purely from a size standpoint. We look at them from a tuning point of view, the top and bottom head of each drum is carefully tuned to precise frequencies which correspond to major 3rds in the musical scale (frequencies chosen courtesy of Tunebot drum tuner). Here is a link to our article about Tunebot, if you don't know about this very cool drum tuning aid you should check this out.

The transition from the 14" to the 18" sounds very rich and normal, nothing is missing except the excessive ring of poorly tuned drums. Our floor toms sing beautifully without the need for moon gel, tea towels, tape or any form of deadening.