I'm looking at gating for our kick drum mic. Initially I was looking at the Behringer Expander Gate MX4400. Having read a bit about gating and expanding live, I also think it would be an idea to use gating and possibly compression on the two Vocals and Sax. So am now looking at the Multi Com Pro MDX 4600 which does a whole host of things. Now looking at that, I'm wondering if I should use one channel for the kick drum and possibly one for sax and then two on the outputs to the power amp, as we also run Guitar and keys through the PA.

Anyone have any suggestions?

A bit of additional info:

I'm using a Soundcraft Spirit F16, Alesis Midiverb and Peavey PV1500 amp into 2 Peavey pro15 speakers.
I have a Behringer feedback destroyer in the monitor loop.
The keys are line-in to the desk, the guitar is line-in from the FX send of the guitar amp, 2xvocals, kick drum and Sax are miced.

Its all self op too. We set it up and sound check ourselves and the keyboard player may alter channel faders while we play, but that's the extent to any changes made during the gig.

Tim, just a general reply. There's really no good reason to gate a live drum unless it's ringing really badly(that's the drummers responsibility) or there's noise in the kick mic signal chain(that's the soundman's responsibility). With gating, you run the risk of chopping off light kick hits.. not really a good thing to do. JMHO. If you're going for some kind of effect, that's another story.

Best, Paul

Thanks Paul.

We're only playing small venues. 200-300 people. On small reverberant stages we often have problems with Bass Guitar and Keys leaking into the kick drum mic (at least I think that's what's happening). The bass guitar is not going out through the PA.

The idea of the gate was to try to stop some of this spill and also to reduce the ringing from the kick.

As we're only playing small venues the idea is just to give the kick some lift rather than fill the room with kick drum.

I'll try to talk the drummer into damping it down more, but I'm not sure he'll like that.

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If other instruments are leaking into the kick mic that badly, they're probably going to keep a gate from ever closing unless you have the threshold really high, in which case you're gonna loose some of the good kick stuff.

Mic placement and type are pretty criical for a kick. You might try getting it more inside the shell and baffling it with blankets. The idea is kinda like covering your ears.. you just hear less of what's around you, as opposed to what's in front of you. Pretty run-of-the mill tactic. One other thing that might help. Reduce the level of ALL mics at their channel input by 20-30%. Then make up the volume loss at the mixer's output. It's an old trick to reduce feedback in live situations. Might help here.

I never did understand drummers who didn't care enough about their sound to not try to improve it. Laziness? Maybe. Stubborness? For sure!!

Best, Paul

What you need it a good gate that is frequency tunable. This allows you to select a small frequency range of the incoming signal that the gate triggers on, so things like bass guitar and other instruments do NOT open the gate, only the tuned sound of the kick drum.

Good gates are not cheap, and Behringer doesn't make them. Check out Drawmer and Klark Teknik, or BSS.

What might fit your needs and budget is the BSS 944. It has 2 channels of frequency dependent gates, AND 2 channels of compression, also frequency dependent if you want. You can probably find one used for$500 or so.

Thanks for the input.
He was happy to go with the damping, but I have a feeling the hole in his resonant head is too big to get a decent low and resonant tone. It's about 10" across. Even the smallest bit of damping completely kills the resonance but it sounds terrible undamped. I think a new head is required first.

Hey Tim,

Has anyone actually gotten down on all fours and listened to find a decent sound.. you know, the sweet spot? If you can find someplace that works, that's half the battle. It might be outside the front head or inside it. If blanket damping doesn't work, he's gotta get in there and fix whatever is resonating or ringing. Tighten things up, especially the heads themselves. It takes time to experiment. If you can, record the problem sound and post a clip back here. AAR, keep us posted.

Best, Paul

The quality of the head is very important, if it's old, then it won't properly tune. HEads in good condition properly tuned (and kept that way throughout the performance) in my experience don't require gating.

Sounds to me you have more of an issue with a poorly tuned kit with old heads. Correct the problem at the source first.

Yes the problem is definitely old heads.

He's going to look at replacing them but, until I spoke to him at length about it the other day, he wasn't sure that he would get a better sound out of a 20 year old kit just by changing the heads. Personally I too would probably struggle to get my head round spending more on skins than what the shells are worth only to find out there's no improvement. However, he has recently changed the batter and resonant heads on all his toms and can now see a big improvement on them, so here's hoping. We've got some well paying gigs coming up so £100(US$200) on new heads might be money well spent.

This has only really become a noticeable issue now that we are trying to mic up the bass drum, previously the rest of the band were so loud that the nuances, overtones and ringing on the bass drum were pretty much lost in the mix.

My personal kit, which is by far the most popular studio kit here, is over 40 years old. Unless there is damage to the shells, warping or cracks, there is no logic to your thinking.

The price of new heads is minor compared with the cost of a new kit.