Kik drum "passive resonators"...utility for recording?

[dwoz]

I've got a buddy who has a very nice DW kit, with passive radiators out in front of his double bass setup.

sometimes called "extenders"...

For those who are scratching their heads here...these essentially look like narrow kik drums, with front and back heads, that sit in front of the bass drums and acoustically couple with them. Essentially makes the drum, for all intents and purposes, another 16 inches deep.

Live, they really punch the kik up. Recording-wise, are they as much of a liability or time-sink as they seem they might be, or has anyone had success using them?

dwoz

[Brendo]

Isn't this just a variation on the "kick drum tunnel"? I remember reading an article saying Franz Ferdinand did this on the first record.

[chrisj]

Can't hoit to have a bunch more resonating heads at different overtone pitches, though it's not the approach I take- for a couple months now I've been using a trick I ripped off from Bruce Swedien on another web forum. Instead of making a packing blanket sleeve for the front head, I just glued a bunch of fake-fur onto a crappy spare head and whacked it on there, with a small hole to put the mic through.

Interesting thing is, it damps the hell out of the drum fundamental, eats it up completely after a few vibrations, and damps the overtones enough that you barely even need to put anything on the batter head- I have some more stuff, this time fake fleece, stretched NEAR the batter head without touching it.

I see no reason why you couldn't tune the resonator-drum to frequencies where it's damping the fundamental and turning it into a massive broadband WHUMPH. Of course, this defines 'horrible time sink' very nicely, but you might as well be time sinking on the original instrument sounds, right?

I would see if there were relatively quick ways to tune the thing so it tended to dissipate the boom of the drum rather than make it even more unmanageable. If so, go for it :)

[otek]

It's not so much a kick drum tunnel as it is an equivalent of putting an extra kick drum in front of the first one. The "actual" kick drum makes the added one resonate sympathetically, and if the "resonator" kick is tuned right, this will create a low, rumbling tone after each hit.

It will also pick up some of the toms and even the snare.

I personally think it's a mighty cool sound.

I've tried doing it with both one and two heads on the "resonator" kick. An LDC works best for me. Sometimes I have the LDC turned away from the regular kick, inside the resonator, pointing into its front head (polarity usually has to be flipped for this). Always check for phase issues.

I have seen the DW version of this, but never tried it.

[Johnny]

The DW version is called a "Woofer." It's double-headed, with a May mic inside--can't remember which model comes standard. You can get all the popular kik mics. You can buy one to match your kit's finish.

I've never used one, but I have had something similar done to a track of mine on mixdown. We tuned up a kik with no muffling and a mic inside, then ran my kik sound to an 18" set up against one head. The engineer then mixed the resonant kik in with my track. It sounded pretty good, but not worth all the trouble IMO.

He's done the same thing with a snare to add some trash to it.

[ajcamlet]

i could see how that would be useful if small live situations, but in recording? i dunno..... seems like over kill. never had any problem getting enough beef out of a kick drum...

[otek]

i could see how that would be useful if small live situations, but in recording? i dunno..... seems like over kill. never had any problem getting enough beef out of a kick drum...

It's not the beef, it's a certain sound. Having undamped, resonating heads sounds way different. Sure, you could get some of that effect on a regular drum, but to really get that sound requires a large bass drum - typically 24" and up - and that may not be what you want for the "impact" part of the sound.

FWIW I have recorded "resonance" kicks as large as 32" and gotten great sounds. And it can be made to ring sympathetically with the toms and snare, too, which gives a great sense of liveness to the whole kit.

I'm not saying that this is the sound for every occasion, but it is a great color to put on the palette.

[jfee]

I've never used 'resonator' but we had a Gretch kick that fit snuggly inside a premier kick....it made it a super long kick.

It worked pretty well. Unfortunately, it was a while ago and I remember thinking it was super cool! I just don't recall if it was because it looked supercool or sounded supercool!

Try it out!

[otek]

I've never used 'resonator' but we had a Gretch kick that fit snuggly inside a premier kick....it made it a super long kick.

Ok, so you did it the other way around - a resonator smaller than the "actual" kick?

Interesting, haven't tried that one.

[Jason Phair]

Duuuuuude.


It's a DW.


You don't need anything to help it sound good.


:D

[Jason Phair]

When I worked with SRV's old drummer, with a band whose name I don't remember, he had two kick drums that he sorta put together to make one big long-ass one. I seem to recall them being Fibes.

[otek]

I seem to recall them being Fibes.


What, Fibes played drums with SRV?!?! :icon_eek:



















































:lol:

[archtop]

When I worked with SRV's old drummer, with a band whose name I don't remember


"Arc Angels" perhaps ?

[Kenny Gioia]

I literally just finished a session with Sean Pelton where we used his DW resonator drum with a d112 (cut in half) inside the drum.

We put the drum at a 45 degree angle so I could mic up the first kik normally and mix the resonator kik in.

I really loved it.

It's not a sub thing at all. Imagine miking a drum with no blankets. It would sound very live and have no click or punch.

Now take the same drum and put a pillow in it. Nice punch and click but not nearly as much tone.

You could try and deaden less and less or use this method to get the best of both worlds.

[Johnny]

Kenny, I read about his home studio in a recent Modern Drummer. Have you done any work with him out of there? I'm interested in what kind of results he's getting.

[Jason Phair]

"Arc Angels" perhaps ?

I had to look it up - it's been a few years. The band was "Grady"

[Kenny Gioia]

Kenny, I read about his home studio in a recent Modern Drummer. Have you done any work with him out of there? I'm interested in what kind of results he's getting.

Nah. We're cutting everything at my studio.

The results?

Ridiculous!!!

I told him that he's inspired me to STOP playing drums.

:lol: :lol: :lol: