Review: Mays Internal Drum Mic system

[CollinCo.Drummer]

I wanted to post a review of the Mays Mic system I have on my "live" kit.
Here's a rundown of the system components:

2 Sennheiser e604 (10" and 12" toms)
1 AKG D-112FT (14" floor tom)
1 AKG D-112BD (kick)
3 AVC-1 non-drill adaptor kits
1 AVC-2 non-drill adaptor kit (kick)
Because I didn't want to drill my shells, each drum is equipped with the AVC-1/2 non-drill adaptor kit that consists of a black powdercoated mounting plate and a XLR pass-through connector that routes the audio out the drums existing vent hole. These were available from Mays as an accessory. I also chose to not use a Mays mic on the snare drum for several reasons. First, I had heard from other Mays users that snare drums don't mic well internally. Additionally, I wanted the ability to swap between 4 different snare drums for variety, and I didn't want to have to buy 4 microphones, or constantly be moving the mic between drums.
Installation was fairly straightforward. I removed the batter head on each of the toms and the resonant head on the kick drum. No reason for this except that I really liked the tuning I had on the kick's batter head and didn't want to have to try and re-create it. I then attached the microphone assembly to the adaptor plate. This is much easier than attempting to attach the microphone assembly to the plate after the plate is attached to the drum, particularly in the confined space of the 10". I removed the factory vent-hole grommets and set them aside. I used a short ratcheting screwdriver to remove two screws holding a lug to the shell near the vent hole. The bracket attaches to the shell using these lug screws. The XLR male audio connector with cable threads through the vent hole and attaches with a large threaded wing nut. the 3 wires from the XLR attach to the microphone by slipping over the male XLR pins on the back of each microphone. Positioning of the microphone must be done before you replace the heads. With the non-drill adaptor kit in place there is no way to re-position the microphone from outside of the drum. This is the lone trade-off for using the "AVC-1/2" non-drill kit. Experimenting has shown me that I prefer to aim the microphone on the toms toward the center of the head off-axis at an angle, because I want to focus on the tone of the drum more than the attack, and minimize overtones from the edges of the head. You may find that you have a different preference based on your genre or playing style. I have found that the more on-axis the microphone is the greater the attack, and aiming the microphone toward or away from the edge of the head varies the overtones picked up by the mic. On the kick drum you can see that I aim the mic from slightly off axis, but roughly at the beater impact point for more attack. The kick drum version of the D-112 has an articulating arm that is tightened with an allen wrench that allows for huge variation in placement of the microphone within the drum. Replace the heads and re-tune as usual.
I attached microphone cables to each drums external XLR adaptor and ran them to XLR inputs on the mixing console. The mics mentioned thus far are dynamic microphones and do not require phantom power. I utilized very little EQ on the toms, more so on the kick to bring out the low end. I used a Shure SM-57 on the snare drum, and Shure SM-81 condensers (phantom power required) on the hi-hats and 2 overheads. When working with my bands own mixer I have enough inputs to handle my drums (eight). Some venues can't surrender 8 channels, so I have a little Ashly 8 channel rack mixer that I can use to sub-mix the kit from the stage and just feed the front of house mixer with stereo line level XLR's.
For your sonic evaluation you can download an MP3 compressed test of the mic system here:
http://www.palatiampg.com/CollinCoDrumSample.mp3
Remember, computer speakers rarely do drums any justice, try headphones!

[late8]

Very nice tuning (and playing) and the MP3 compression test sounded fantastic. Was the compression a plug-in at the DAW to the overall mix of the kit or was each channel input compressed within its own parameters? I'd be really interested to hear the raw mix before compression to hear the actual drum mics before the final mix down. Is that all possible? Thanks....

[marko138]

Nice thread. Very interesting. Drums sound great too.

[thunderstruck]

Great review. Thanks for sharing. The drums sound killer.

[ntn2it]

The PDP Platinums sound every bit as good as any high dollar set out there. You even got that PDP snare sounding good. Nice job! Thanks for the review.

[longgun]

Great Review.........I've been thinking about the Mays system for quite awhile............your drums sound great

[CollinCo.Drummer]

Was the compression a plug-in at the DAW to the overall mix of the kit or was each channel input compressed within its own parameters? I'd be really interested to hear the raw mix before compression to hear the actual drum mics before the final mix down. Is that all possible? Thanks....

Late8 - The drums were run through the Presonus StudioLive 16.4.2 mixer and out stereo SPIDIF to a Tascam DR-680 digital audio recorder recording at 24bit 48Khz. There was no EQ or compression on the stereo mix into the recorder but there was some plate reverb (I believe the setting was "wood floor" . The microphones being inside the drums provide zero room ambience so they are dry, dry! The advantage is very low crosstalk between sources.
The "compression I speak of is in the DAW. I took the stereo audio file from the Tascam and ran it into Sony Acid and rendered it out as an MP3. I have the original wav file I could send you a link to download but it's nearly 50MB in size. It still has the reverb and such from the Presonus If you want a dry sample I'd have to record you a new one without any reverb. Maybe this weekend?

[CollinCo.Drummer]

You even got that PDP snare sounding good.

Remember! I cheated. That's NOT the stock PDP snare drum that came with the Platinum kits. That is a PDP Platinum single-ply steam-bent shell. A very different drum to be sure.

Thanks everyone for the nice comments. I hope you got something out of the review.

[late8]

Late8 - The drums were run through the Presonus StudioLive 16.4.2 mixer and out stereo SPIDIF to a Tascam DR-680 digital audio recorder recording at 24bit 48Khz. There was no EQ or compression on the stereo mix into the recorder but there was some plate reverb (I believe the setting was "wood floor" . The microphones being inside the drums provide zero room ambience so they are dry, dry! The advantage is very low crosstalk between sources.
The "compression I speak of is in the DAW. I took the stereo audio file from the Tascam and ran it into Sony Acid and rendered it out as an MP3. I have the original wav file I could send you a link to download but it's nearly 50MB in size. It still has the reverb and such from the Presonus If you want a dry sample I'd have to record you a new one without any reverb. Maybe this weekend?

Thanks for the detailed response Collin. No need to go through the trouble to do it again but I do appreciate the thought. So just to clearify, no eq except the plate reverb setting (wood floor) before you brought it into the DAW? Thanks..

[CollinCo.Drummer]

The stereo out of the mixer had no EQ or compression on it. There's a 4 band EQ on each channel of the mixer that did get adjusted slightly for each drum to aid that particular drums range, is that what you were asking?

[late8]

The stereo out of the mixer had no EQ or compression on it. There's a 4 band EQ on each channel of the mixer that did get adjusted slightly for each drum to aid that particular drums range, is that what you were asking?

Yes exactly....I'm in an intense recording session right now and I've been working as a session drummer for a friend in his home recording studio. After several scratch tracks of my drumming as been laid down, now we are in the process of re-recording the drums. I'm struggling with the dated software being used (cool edit pro) so I appreciate your mix you posted and I'll be happy if I can even get close to your quality of the mix. I'll try to add a bit of eq to each channel out of the mixer before it gets to the DAW as you explained to see if I can sweeten up the kit. We are adding a little digital reverb on the snare in cool edit pro and its sounds too processed. Maybe add it at the analog mixer before it's renedered in the DAW?

[Digital]

Can you get this mounting system without mics? I already have all the Audix mics. It'd be nice to get the mounting hardware only and do away with the plastic clips.

[CollinCo.Drummer]

Can you get this mounting system without mics? I already have all the Audix mics. It'd be nice to get the mounting hardware only and do away with the plastic clips.

I'm not sure if you could do this with existing mics. But check out their MBM-1 and MBM2 mounts they might do what you are looking to do. Usually the Mays integrate the microphone into the housing and shock-isolation. you can find alot of info on the DW website, they have a separate page for the Mays mic system. I'd post a link, but I think that is verboten!

[CollinCo.Drummer]

We are adding a little digital reverb on the snare in cool edit pro and its sounds too processed. Maybe add it at the analog mixer before it's renedered in the DAW?

I assume that the reverb you are adding in CEP is a plug-in, who wrote it? Is it a bundled reverb included in CEP? If so, that's probably the culprit. One possible solution that is pretty cost effective is the Lexicon MX-200 Dual Reverb Processor. It has some really good quality reverbs that sound natural and very organic. The plus is that it is USB equipped, so that even though it is an outboard processor, your DAW can see it as an available plug-in. Your DAW won't have to do the number crunching with the computers CPU, it will happen in the MX-200. This frees up your computer for other tasks, and it plain sounds better, at about $199 new it's a bargan. Find a decent used one for a song (literally!)